Trump Orders War Crimes. Then What? (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Anonymous Artists Mock Trump With Giant Gold Toilet By Lincoln Memorial (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

Trump approval just hit the 30s. Can his numbers get any lower? (Nate Silver/Silver Bulletin)  In the Narrative Media, you can count on it.

Raskin rips Patel over reported plan to release decade-old Swalwell files (Max Rego/The Hill)  My, what a surprise.

America Is Abandoning Morality (W.J. Hennigan/New York Times) Proglodyte morality, that is.

States Plow Ahead With A.I. Regulation, Defying Trump (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)

Newsom Blames Trump for High Gas Prices. But California Created Its Own Energy Nightmare.

Trump’s Tax Cut Delivers at Least $65 Billion Windfall to Corporations (Caitlin Reilly/Bloomberg)  Ponder the people who characterize being allowed to keep more of your own money as a ‘windfall’.

In Supreme Court Justices’ Histories, a Story of Immigration in America (New York Times)  The Narrative Media persists in refusing to distinguish immigration from illegal immigration.

Trump Secretly Admits Humiliating Defeat on Major War Aim (Ewan Palmer/The Daily Beast) Must not be much of a secret if the high-schoolers at The Daily Beast know about it.

Trump says Strait of Hormuz is the world’s problem: ‘Go get your own oil!’ (Gregory Svirnovskiy/Politico) Sounds good to me.

Colbert: ‘Yes We Can’ Stop Fascism With Defecating Trump Balloon

Congress is a bastion of Republican bigotry (Mark Jacob/Stop the Presses)

Behind the scenes and in front of cameras, Hegseth serving as top cheerleader for military power in Iran war (CNN)

The Nonsense Case Against Birthright Citizenship (Mother Jones)

Trump’s Rage Erupts Over War Failures as Pope’s Harsh Rebuke Hits Hard (New Republic)

Federal judge orders halt to White House ballroom construction (ABC News)

Judge orders Trump administration to halt White House ballroom construction unless Congress OKs it (Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press)

Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Revoked Status of Migrants Who Used Entry App (Zach Montague/New York Times)

Judge halts construction on Trump’s White House ballroom (Washington Post)

Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Halts White House Ballroom Construction (Zach Montague/New York Times)

Here’s how U.S. residents feel about Trump’s signature on American cash (Herb Scribner/Axios) Well, at least the ones chosen by Axios.

Federal judge temporarily blocks further demolition of the White House for Trump’s ballroom (NBC News)

Judge Orders Construction Stopped on Trump’s White House Ballroom (Zach Montague/New York Times)

Trump is flailing in Iran. Every word he says adds to the muddle (Ted Widmer/The Guardian)

Trump Rages After Judge Blocks White House Ballroom Construction (Ryan Bort/Rolling Stone)

The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree (New York Times)

President Trump Tells EU Leaders to “Go Get Your Own Oil” from Gulf – In Interim, Welcome King Charles

Obama Judge Halts Trump Effort to End Parole for Hundreds of Thousands

Judge Finds Cutting Taxpayer Funding From NPR and PBS Violates First Amendment

Read it.

Zohran Mamdani is clearly aiming to convince the world that he isn’t anti-Semitic in the most lefty-coded theater-kid way possible. It didn’t quite go as he planned.

The New York mayor attended what The New York Times called a “hip” Passover Seder on Monday.

The event was also attended by former CNN host Don Lemon, who is in a bit of legal trouble at the moment, and a whole host of other characters, including a drag-queen rabbi who phoned in from Jerusalem and George Floyd’s brother, who spoke about “racism,” according to the Times.

Read it.

The Trump administration is organizing an international summit focused on countering the left-wing movement antifa and other groups, three sources familiar with the matter said, an effort that reflects changes in the U.S. government’s counterterrorism priorities over the past year.

The conference, tentatively planned for June or July, will convene officials from various nations to discuss strategies for addressing antifa and encourage intelligence sharing, said the sources, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

President Donald Trump has described antifa as a significant threat to the U.S.

Read it.

Florence Bergeaud-Blackler is a French anthropologist who specializes in scholarly research on Islam. She is the author of Les Sens du halal : une norme dans un marché mondial (The senses of halal : a standard in a global market) and Le Marché halal : ou l’invention d’une tradition (The Halal Market : or the invention of a tradition). Her most recent book is Le Frérisme et Ses Reseaux, l’Enquête (The Brotherhood and its Networks : An Investigation). Her work has earned the enmity of Muslims, to the point that she has to live under police protection.

Rémi Brague is a French historian and professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. He is one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on Sharia law and the history of Islam.

Read it.

The FBI said on Monday that an attack on the largest Jewish temple in Michigan earlier this month was an “act of terrorism” inspired by Hezbollah.

Ayman Ghazali, a 41-year-old man who was born in Lebanon and became a U.S. citizen in 2016, killed himself during the March 12 attack, when he crashed his truck into the Temple of Israel synagogue before opening fire on security guards and causing an explosion using fireworks, said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Detroit field office.

No one else died during the attack on the synagogue where children were attending preschool.

“Oh Muslim, Oh Servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.” — hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari

Read it.

It’s certainly a problem for him and for people who think like  him.

A British Liberal Democrat MP has openly admitted what the political class really fears about Elon Musk’s X: it lets ordinary Britons speak freely about the disaster of mass immigration.

In a clip that exploded across the platform on Monday, Cheltenham MP Max Wilkinson described X as a “massive problem” precisely because it gives critics of unchecked migration a voice.

“It’s a really easy [way] to get some content out about how you think immigration is too high, or immigration is the big thing that’s tearing the country apart… X is now making sure that you can have your voice heard in a really easy way that you couldn’t in the past,” he complained.

This is not some fringe rant. Wilkinson, the Lib Dems’ Home Office spokesperson, simply said the quiet part out loud. While the establishment lectures the public about “tolerance” and “diversity,” it seethes at the idea that native Brits can now push back online without gatekeepers filtering their concerns.

The backlash was instant and brutal. Toby Young of the Free Speech Union fired back: “Labour MP Max Wilkinson says the quiet part out loud: He doesn’t like X because it enables people who think immigration is too high to have their voices heard.”

Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson was even sharper: “God forbid people should be able to say on X that immigration is far too high. Or that it is causing problems for our way of life. Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson thinks those opinions should be silenced. How dare he!”

This admission lands at the perfect moment to expose the broader pattern of suppressio

Newsbusters.

On Monday’s Morning Joe, the MS NOW program’s co-host Jonathan Lemire claimed the Israeli military killed the Iranian Parliament Speaker, who had emerged as the apparent key negotiator and possible new leader in Iran according to the White House.

Around 10 minutes after his statement, host Joe Scarborough asked Lemire to clarify his comments, to which he clarified the report of the Speaker’s death may be untrue and shifted his tone to mention that the Parliament Speaker may have no power anyway, a flip from his original smug comments on negotiations.

A focus of the premier liberal morning talk program was on how a war with Iran would end through negotiations. David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post, discussed many diplomatic options, but called the president “overoptimistic.”

Read it.

There will be no Charlie Kirk highway in his home state of Arizona. The reason: politics.

Exactly whose politics is to blame has become a point of debate.

Kirk, the conservative leader known for his campus debates, was assassinated last year during an event at Utah Valley University. Republicans in Arizona, where Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization is based, passed legislation attempting to add Kirk’s name to Loop 202, a highway circling through the sprawling Phoenix area.

Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it on Friday.

In a veto message to state lawmakers, Hobbs denounced political violence but suggested that Republicans had inappropriately injected politics into a decision rightly left to a state board that names historic highways.

Read it.

We get the government we choose to elect, hence the government we deserve. Voting for ever-higher punitive taxes on the rich is arguably a form of civic suicide. Consider that a wealthy New Yorker can get a raise of almost 40% just by moving.

That’s right. If moving eliminates a 14.8% top state and local tax rate, our top-tier taxpayer gets a 36% raise, not a 14.8% raise, by leaving. It’s doubtful if any of our city and state leaders have done this math, but it’s shocking.

Mamdani wants to take the top rate up another 2%, if not by the state then by the city, which would mean that our rich neighbor can get a 42% raise.

Daily Mail (UK).

A Wall Street titan is weighing an exodus from New York as fears grow over rising taxes under the city’s new left-wing mayor.

Apollo Global Management, one of the biggest private capital firms in the world, is planning a second US headquarters in the South – with most future hiring set to happen outside Manhattan.

The $900 billion firm is considering cities in a variety of Sunbelt states – including Austin, Nashville, or somewhere in South Florida.

The move puts Apollo among a growing list of finance heavyweights drifting away from New York, long seen as the global capital of money.

Florida has already attracted major players such as Citadel and Elliott Management, while Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are establishing a strong presence in Texas.

Partners and managing directors were recently surveyed on what their location preference would be, according to people familiar with the situation.

The company announced plans to relocate just as New York City’s mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed to hike up taxes on major corporations.

‘We’ve shared with our teams across Apollo and Athene that we plan to establish a second headquarters in either Texas or south Florida, alongside NYC,’ Apollo told the Financial Times.

And there was much rejoicing…. Except for the Narrative Media, of course.

Dozens Arrested for Failing to Disperse After ‘No Kings’ Rally in Los Angeles

“Worse Than the 1970s” ??? Donald Trump, it seems, has managed to outdo his first term’s mismanagement … (Ryan C. Smith/Liberal Currents)

Trump officials cite white supremacists in bid to end birthright citizenship (Justin Jouvenal/Washington Post)

MAGA Was Supposed to Be Antiwar. Nope. (Kristen Soltis Anderson/New York Times)  MaGA is the New Nigger.

They’ve Been Accused of Running a ‘Covert’ Operation in Greenland. It’s No Secret. (New York Times)

Pete Hegseth Just Revealed the Real Roots of His Sadism and Rage (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

Spain closes airspace to US planes involved in Iran war, defence minister says (Reuters)

The left LOVES kings — the ones with (D) after their name (New York Post)

When ICE Blows Through Rural America (Emma Janssen/American Prospect)

The FCC chair is openly cheering the weakening of the press (Tom Jones/Poynter)

The Great Republican DHS Funding Rake-Stepping Fest (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Trump’s Iran war is holding him hostage (Sidney Blumenthal/The Guardian)  Is Sid Vicious still alive?

This Is How Trump Is Already Threatening the Midterms (David Gilbert/Wired)

New Evidence Corroborates Claims of Trump Sex Accuser, 13 (Cameron Adams/The Daily Beast)

Trump’s America and the Axis of Autocracy (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

Pete Hegseth Believes in the Lethality Fairy (Paul Krugman  Paul Krugman spends too much time breathing his own exhaust.

The Trump-voting pastor Democrats think could cost them a chance at a Nebraska Senate seat (Andrew Kaczynski/CNN)

First Draft: Are These Trump’s Worst Poll Numbers… Ever? (Andrew Perez/Zeteo)

Major Airports Return to Normal as TSA Workers Get Paid

ICE Agent’s Heroic Act Saves Toddler at Airport, Counters Dems’ Dire Predictions

‘Battle of the titans’: Trump’s distorted reality on Iran war runs into a brick wall (David Smith/The Guardian)

NY Times Relays Anti-Trump Conspiracy Kookery (and 44 Photos) From ‘No Kings’ Rallies

This weekend, women in Handmaid’s Tale garb marched alongside protesters who want Trump to stop bombing the theocratic regime of Iran ?

The Trump Administration Comes for State Voter Rolls (Eric Columbus/Lawfare)

President Trump’s Approval Sinks to 33% in New UMass Poll (Jared Sharpe/UMass Amherst)

What ‘deadline’? — The “deadline” for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction … (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

What Are Your Obligations When Your Country Is the Villain? (Aaron Regunberg/The Nation)  Move.

Most say Trump administration has not done enough to ‘Make America Healthy Again’: Survey (Tara Suter/The Hill)

Trump says White House ballroom plans include ‘massive’ underground military complex (Megan Lebowitz/NBC News)  Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….l

‘I Think That MAGA Is Dying’: Inside the Youth Movement at CPAC (Nathan Taylor Pemberton/New York Times)  They hope, they hope, they hope,,,.

Republicans Flirt With Kicking Americans Off Health Care to Fund Iran War (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)  In proglodyte dreams.

MAGA’s latest campaign of cruelty targets immigrant kids’ education (Svante Myrick/The Hill) MAGA is the New Nigger.

US military building ‘massive complex’ beneath White House ballroom project: Trump (Agence France-Presse) Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

John C. Write.

All, or nearly all, the classical logical fallacies are fallacies because they are perfectly reliable social methods of weighing evidence in real life in cases where logic does not necessitate an answer.

Ad hominem: It is normal and reasonable to take the character of the witness into account when weighing the believability of his testimony — it merely does not necessarily prove he is lying here and now, even though he lies frequently.

Ad Antiquitatem: It is normal and reasonable to pay more respect to a belief that has stood the test of time, and been found worthy by several generations to pass from father to son. This does not prove an older belief is true, but it may shift the burden of proof.

Ad populum: It is normal and reasonable to take into account whether a belief has been pondered and accepted by a large number of people, rather than being a fringe belief, believed by a few. Two heads are better than one. This does not prove the popular belief is true, but it means the unpopular belief must overcome a greater burden of skepticism: for one must not only explain the question at hand, but also explain why this wisdom is confined to so few.

Ad Verecundiam: It is normal and reasonable to defer to expert opinion on a topic, if the experts have spent more time, effort, or resources studying the issue, particularly if one is in no position to compare this with what is commonly known. Again, it does not prove the expert is correct, but it may shift the burden of proof.

And so on.

For example, stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. They reflect the learned experience of a lot of people.

For another example, clichés are clichés for a reason. They reflect the learned experience of a lot of people.

This all relates to the cliché that correlation does not imply causation. That’s perfectly true—BUT there is no causation without correlation, and when you don’t know what the causation chain is, and you need to make a decision, correlation is all you’ve got and it‘s better than nothing.

Read it.

One of Marion Barry’s first acts as mayor was to kill the zoning plan his predecessor had put in motion. The first mayor of Washington DC under home rule, Walter Washington oversaw the plans for the city’s subway system (The Metro). He fiercely insisted that the zoning around most stops be adjusted to bring about a mix of residential, retail and office space to use the Metro to help establish distinct neighborhoods. Barry correctly inferred that this kind of renewal would bring more middle-class and upper middle class residents back to DC and those people were not his base.

The large developers also hated the plan because it restricted construction of (then lucrative) office space along K St. Barry got campaign cash from that sector and a promise that low income housing would be built in the city’s poorest ward as soon as “suitable sites became available.” Barry then announced that he had shaken down The Man on behalf of the the disadvantage black underclass in his first days in office.

Oddly enough, those “suitable sites” never became available. DC remained heavily poor and over 2/3 black for the remainder of Barry’s first 12 year stretch as mayor. But now those “suitable sites” have indeed become available but not for pubic housing.

Read it.

Went to the No Kings assemblies in my town and the next nearby town on Saturday. Mental illness as far as the eye could see. Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.

They believe things that are patently insane, for instance, the latest proposal by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that illegal immigrants deserve reparations on account of being “traumatized” by U.S. immigration enforcement actions.

If it feels like the Democratic Party is at war with our country you are not hallucinating.

It is every bit as much a jihad as the Death to America crowd in Iran has explicitly pushed since 1979.

Read it.

“I confronted a No Kings protestor on the lack of diversity at the protest, she told me she’s here because black people can’t be,” Podcaster Nate Friedman explains, introducing video of an interview he conducted at Saturday’s “No King’s Day” protest in New York.

“It seems like there’s a lack of diversity here today, that it’s mostly people like you and I,” Friedman tells a White female protestor at the event, prompting her to claim that Black people – and only Black people – would be arrested at the rally:

“It is not safe for them and they don’t need to participate,” the White protestor added, claiming that “We need to walk in their name.”

It’s also a racist scheme to require voters to show identification, the woman, who says she “voted Democrat in the womb, claimed.

Read it.

The Washington Post first reported that Patel was considering releasing files to the public after reopening the investigation of California congressman Eric Swalwell’s relationship with a Chinese honeypot named Fang Fang.

I guess dating a Chinese spy isn’t technically against the law, as long as there’s no proof he divulged any secret information to the commie spy.

Read it.

How strong is a missile defense network if the hardest part is not the interception, but the refill? That question has moved to the center of defense planning as analysts examine the strain placed on some of the Pentagon’s most specialized munitions. The issue is not whether the United States can launch strikes or defend key sites in the short term. It is whether the country can keep doing both while preserving enough high-end inventory for other theaters, especially when the most capable interceptors and long-range missiles are also the slowest to replace.

Read it.

Slavery was a universal feature of every society until Christians decided to stop in in the 18oos.

The reparations effort is being led by Ghana, which is, of course, setting itself up as one of the chief beneficiaries of the U.N. resolution.

“We are demanding compensation—and let us be clear, African leaders are not asking for money for themselves,” Ghana’s foreign minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said to the BBC. “We want justice for the victims and causes to be supported, educational and endowment funds, skills training funds.”

Ah, so Africa’s politicians aren’t trying to enrich themselves personally. That would be brazen and crass. No, they are merely attempting to loot other countries to pay off their constituents. How noble. How heroic.

That’s ultimately what this reparations push is about. It’s an attempt by several African countries to use globalist institutions and the façade of international law to essentially receive a permanent stipend from self-loathing Western suckers, I mean nations. It’s also a tool whereby other antagonists of the West can score some historical points against their rivals while ignoring their own modern crimes and tyranny.

The American Mind.

Every couple of years, another hit piece surfaces to explain why the Right supposedly hates women and why women on the Right hate themselves. The Left has trafficked in condescending explanations for the alleged paradox of the right-wing female for quite a long time. The latest in this tired genre, “The Young Women Leaving the New Right” in New York Magazine, is more of the same, dressed up for the digital age.

We are supposed to believe that conservative women are “Pick Mes,” seeking to gain male validation by belittling other women. They are afraid of their right-wing husbands, are too dumb to form their own opinions about politics, have “internalized misogyny,” lack dignity, and so on.

Not even the element of poaching a few disgruntled former conservatives and mining them for embarrassing tidbits is a remotely new tactic. There have always been some willing to take the liberal media up on the chance to open their kimono in exchange for the opportunity to fire a shot at their intra-right nemeses.

However, the sources interviewed by the “journalist” Sam Adler-Bell, who also co-hosts a podcast dissecting the Right in much the same way as visitors view monkeys in a zoo, don’t bolster his case. Much of the “evidence” on the charge of misogyny is a series of anonymously told personal stories that amount to one-sided gossip, with the true nature of the described interactions impossible to discern.

Read it.

Had the common-sense provisions of the Expatriation Act of 1907 or even the milder Nationality Act of 1940 been in force today, we wouldn’t have the farce of cartel and terrorist leaders who still hold our citizenship, active traitors with citizenship, “refugees” who spend most of their time back home or a Somali senator linked to fraud who is still voting in Minnesota elections.

The Warren Court’s deliberate misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment’s awkward attempt to define all black people as citizens, “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power… are declared to be citizens,” somehow trumped the clear language of Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 that Congress has the power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization”.

In a series of bad decisions, Supreme Court rulings argued that serving in a foreign military, desertion, marrying foreigners, and voting abroad did not merit denaturalization.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a birthright American Citizen, as is Prince Constantine Achilleas of Greece.

As is

Read it.

Prominent Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California have embraced initiatives to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans, Axios reported.

But moderates in the Democratic Party have argued such taxes are anti-business, legally unfeasible, and too often pitched as addressing wealth inequality rather than using the revenue to expand benefits.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly pushed back on wealth tax proposals in his state.

Progressives, including Khanna, have called on Newsom to support legislation for a one-time tax on Californians who earn more than $1 billion. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a possible 2028 rival to Newsom, was in Los Angeles on Saturday to express support for the tax.

Read it.

As Chicago and other blue cities move toward reparations for African Americans, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, Wa.) wants reparations for illegal immigrants for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement.

At the same time, various Democrats are making clear that they want to entirely defund and eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

So, after the Biden Administration allowed in millions over an open border, Democrats would eliminate ICE and some like Jayapal would pay illegal immigrants reparations.

Everything she actually cares about.

Read it.

Mexico is home to 68 officially recognized Indigenous languages, spoken by nearly 7 million people, including Mayan and Náhuatl. Yet, despite their historical significance, many of these languages are in decline. Urbanization, globalization, and the dominance of Spanish and English are slowly but surely pushing them to the brink.

To preserve Mexico’s rich linguistic heritage, Mexican authorities have kick-started an initiative to offer Indigenous language classes, and, in some cases, fully bilingual curriculums.

In Yucatán, efforts to teach the Maya language in schools are gaining momentum as 35,000 students from 75 municipalities now have the option to study Yucatec-Maya, beginning as early as grade school.

I am reminded of a Richard Pryor video I once saw in which he was telling about a visit he made to Africa. Once there, someone asked him, “What language do you speak at home?” Pryor answered, “English.” The African that he was talking to said, “Yes, of course, everyone speaks English, but what language do you speak at home?” And Pryor was stunned.

Naval News.

Super-sized hovercraft provide a rare and specialized capability that only a handful of navies can afford. China is the only nation investing in these massive platforms, pursuing series production of the Zubr-class vessels for amphibious assault operations. These offer key operational advantages and may signal a growing level of preparedness for a potential invasion of Taiwan.

Watch it.

More than you ever wanted to know about Taiwan, its geography, its place in the international order, and (oh, look) the chip business.

Thousands rally across Utah in ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump (Samantha Moilanen/Salt Lake Tribune)

500 groups with $3B in revenues are behind the #NoKings protests and communist call for ‘revolution’ (Asra Nomani/Fox News)

Date announced for national strike aimed at crippling Trump: ‘No work, no school’ (Raw Story)

No Kings protests draw crowds, with record number taking place across U.S. (Washington Post)

No Kings Protests Held Across the U.S.: Photos and Videos (New York Times)

No Kings rallies across Wisconsin draw thousands (Wisconsin Examiner)

A month into Iran, the GOP’s political reality sinks in (Politico)  The Narrarive Media’s ceaseless drumbeat of talking up Iran as a ‘problem’ for Republicans, a bid to get Republicans to panic, proceeds apace.

‘No Kings’ protests turn violent in Portland, LA and Dallas — as rally near Mar-a-Lago takes bizarre turn (David Spector/New York Post)  It’s ironic that people who can’t tell the difference between a man and an woman think that they are the arbiters of what distinguishes a President from a King.

The larger stakes of Trump’s redesign of Washington, DC (Vox)  Used to be, Democrats could depend on Republicans to play by the Democrat playbook for 90% of the time, which allowed them to focus on the remaining 10%. Trump threw that old playbook out, and Democrats have been playing catch-up ever since.

Invoking faith in wartime, Pete Hegseth breaks norms and worries critics (Michelle Boorstein/Washington Post)Used to be, Democrats could depend on Republicans to play by the Democrat playbook for 90% of the time, which allowed them to focus on the remaining 10%. Trump threw that old playbook out, and Democrats have been playing catch-up ever since. Hegseth learned at the feet of the Master.

Red flare for Trump: ‘No Kings’ rallies a show of political force (Susan Page/USA Today)  No, just an attempt to substitute noise for effective action. The Left depends on virtue-signaling and noisy crowds to give the impression that their support among the population is greater than it actually is. ‘They may have won all the battles/But we had all the good songs!’ (No Kings protests across the world: in pictures (Pejman Faratin/The Guardian))

5 Takeaways From the ‘No Kings’ Rallies as the Midterms Heat Up (Tim Balk/New York Times)  Come and get your Narrative, hot off the press!

Watch it.

Something I have wondered about for years.

Read it.

Who could’ve seen it coming?

Just 101 days into his tenure as the Democratic Party’s youngest vice chair—and the first “Zoomer” to hold that office—party elites have already declared David Hogg’s election null and void, a complaint that sounds suspiciously like “election fraud.”

It’s the latest embarrassment from a spent political party that pales in comparison to President Donald Trump’s incredibly successful first 100 days. If Republicans are wise, they’ll take advantage of the chaos ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The complaint centers on broken parliamentary procedures—the preferred excuse of weasels and dictators alike to undermine democratic elections—specifically, DNC rules mandating “gender parity” to tip the scales in favor of female candidates running against men.

In other words, DEI did Hogg in.

Read it.

Birth rates are falling across the world, and no one seems to know why. But maybe the answer is simpler than we think: people don’t trust the future anymore. This essay introduces the idea of temporal inflation?—?a hidden force that could be reshaping civilization itself.

Navy Matters.

Currently, two of the three LCS supposedly based in the Middle East have been moved (evacuated?) to Singapore.[1] The whereabouts of the third is unknown. Why aren’t they in the Middle East, perhaps ensuring the safe passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz? Isn’t this kind of mission exactly what they were designed for? As you recall, the original LCS concept was that they would boldly enter littoral (hence, the ship’s name) waters and neutralize mines, subs, surface, and land threats so that larger, more expensive ships could operate in the area with less risk.

So, why aren’t they there? Well, we all know the answer. The originally envisioned modules were just flights of fantasy and never materialized. But, what if the original modules had become available as fully functioning equipment? Would such LCSes be useful in the Middle East today?

Read it.

Despite the complicated and heartbreaking situation, Sasha has been able to reconnect with her biological family, which has been an unexpected blessing.

Sasha said that meeting her family was,

…like walking into a house you’ve never been in, but knowing where the light switches are, like I know how to talk to these people.

The connection also extended to Sasha’s young children, who have instantly bonded with their biological grandparents.

Well, this pretty much settles the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate.

Read it.

This is such a pure example of proglodyte self-absorption that I couldn’t resist.

There is a paradox running through politics today. Inequality is growing, but the demand for redistribution is decreasing.

Note the assumption that ‘inequality’ necessarily leads to ‘demand for redistribution’, as if everyone were as consumed by envy as the typical Leftist.

The working classes, historically leaning to the left, are increasingly voting for the right.

Perhaps because they’ve woken up to the fact that the Left wants to make them slaves of the government (run by the Left).

And election campaigns are won with symbolic battles over religion, immigration and “traditional values” rather than wages and welfare.

One of the delusions Marx left his spiritual children is the mistaken notion that politics is downstream from economics, when actually it’s the other way around. If the culture gets religion, immigration, and traditional values right, wages will get right by themseles, and there won’t be any need for ‘welfare’.

A new study (“Presidential lecture: identity politics”) by Nicola Gennaioli and Guido Tabellini of Bocconi University, forthcoming in Econometrica, offers a powerful and disorienting explanation: we are no longer divided into classes, but into cultural identities. And it is on these that the game of democracy is played.

That’s because ‘classes’ imply stratification within a single culture (‘nation’), and the Left has been devoted over the last half century to decomposing existing cultures (such as the U.S.) into identitarian tribes that no longer share a culture and therefore don’t constitute a ‘nation’ in any significant sense.

The heart of the model is simple and radical: people choose the identity they feel is most relevant to the social conflicts of the moment. When economics dominates the agenda, people split by class. But when culture becomes more salient—for example, because of immigration or ethical issues—people position themselves into opposing cultural groups.

Again, this is what the Left has been trying (with a lot of success) to do since the 1960s. Economics only matters within a particular culture, as the Left found out during World War I—the working class of Germany, Russia, France, Italy, and Britain were perfectly happy to go to war against workers from another nation (culture), and the Left just refuses to believe it.

Read the whole thing, and marvel at such cluelessness.

I’ll gladly pay for that kid’s Twinkies….

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Meeting under France’s 2026 G7 presidency at a historic abbey outside Paris on March 26–27, foreign ministers from the world’s leading economies issued a joint call for an immediate halt to attacks on civilians as the war in the Middle East intensifies.

They’re talking the wrong language to the wrong people. One side doesn’t recognize the notion of ‘civilian’—either you’re a Muslim, and so a Soldier of Allah, or you’re not, and so an Enemy of Allah. There is no room for ‘civilian’ in this worldview.

Representatives from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union said protecting civilian lives and infrastructure must be a top priority. They also stressed the need to limit the conflict’s ripple effects across the region and to better coordinate humanitarian aid. Deliberate strikes on civilians or diplomatic sites, they said, can never be justified.

They don’t realize that the other side in this conflict doesn’t care. Muslims play to win. Ripple effects across the region is the whole point. They don’t care abot ‘humanitarian aid’ except as a lever that uses the West’s own morality against itself. “Do what I say or I’ll shoot this dog” only affects the side that cares about the dog.

The talks also touched on concerns about global trade and energy security, including the danger to critical shipping routes, primarily the Strait of Hormuz, and the broader economic consequences straining energy markets and disrupting supply chains.

As long as Iran is a threat, these problems are going to remain problems. The simplest course, joining in to grind Iran’s terrorist regime into the sand, would require work, and they’re much more comfortable in their native habitat, the realm of talk.

Commonweal.

In his new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, historian Erik Baker calls this self-help ideology “the rot festering at the core” of our national obsession with work. A comprehensive and sharply written intellectual history, the book traces the origins of several reputedly twenty-first-century maladies to an earlier age. Gig work, as it turns out, didn’t begin with Uber but with Avon direct-sales reps. The wacky metaphysics of today’s tech billionaires have their analogues in the “mind-cures” of nineteenth-century spiritualists. And the celebration of “charismatic” executives has its origins in German social science, with disturbingly fascist undertones. Baker also demonstrates how a fetish for entrepreneurs shaped both modernization theory during the Cold War and now-discredited market-based solutions to global poverty, especially microfinance. But the “marriage of positive psychology and the entrepreneurial ethic” is the book’s primary target. It’s a rotten worldview because it “enjoins us to work more intensely than we need to,” and more importantly, it “leaves us feeling devoid of purpose when we don’t have work.”

Petra Palusova.

The digital age brings a new economic epoch. Many say that traditional capitalism is ending, and by many, I mean plenty. It is said to be a result of the change of the social fabric and advance of technology – intertwined. The core of this is happening in the digital domain, or better said informational domain and through digital platforms, which will soon move into synthetic virtual spaces as a next step.

There is, of course, no such thing as ‘capitalism’. What most people talk about when they think they are talking about ‘capitalism’ is more accurately industrialism, and socialism needs industrialism more than than un-socialism ever did.

According to the former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto large digital platforms, which no longer operate like oligopolistic firms, but rather like private fiefdoms or estates.

The digital domain has expanded beyond communication and commerce infrastructure. Because an ecosystem of economic and social interaction is getting more and more complex, it has become a battleground for economic and social power. The digital realm – the realm of information and data – interconnects digital spaces governed by technology and those behind it. Some see them as the architects and custodians of a new equalizing infrastructure, others as behemoths that rule over the digital space with their algorithmic dictatorship. So what are they – the builders or techno-feudal lords?

In this article I will review the definitions and arguments, and present an insight, or perhaps a counter-insight, that highlights some major characteristics of today’s digital economy that I don’t necessarily see as feudal.

Read it.

Do you like information theory? Do you like molecular biology? Do you like the idea of smashing them together and seeing what happens? If so, then here’s a question: How much information is in your DNA?

When I first looked into this question, I thought it was simple:

Human DNA has about 3.1 billion base pairs.
Each base pair can take one of four values (A, T, C, or G)
It takes 2 bits to encode one of four possible values (00, 01, 10, or 11)
Thus, human DNA contains 6.2 billion bits.
Easy, right? Sure, except:

You have two versions of each base pair, one from each of your parents. Should you count both?
All humans have almost identical DNA. Does that matter?
DNA can be compressed. Should you look at the compressed representation?
It’s not clear how much of our DNA actually does something useful. The insides of your cells are a convulsing pandemonium of interacting “hacks”, designed to keep working even as mutations constantly screw around with the DNA itself. Should we only count the “useful” parts?

And that’s just your nuclear DNA. Your mitochondria have their own DNA, a relic of the independent microbe that they were before being symbiotically fused with eukaryotic cells.

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Now the thing that, in the last couple of decades, everyone has realized is wrong (I suspect some early Lindybeige videos had something to do with how widespread this notion is), is that you don’t tell archers to ‘fire’ because their weapons don’t involve any fire. But the solution in film has been to keep the arrow volleys – that is, the coordinated all-at-once shooting – and simply change the order to ‘release’ or ‘loose.’ Which isn’t actually any better!

Archers didn’t engage in coordinated all-at-once shooting (called ‘volley fire’), they did not shoot in volleys because there wouldn’t be any point to do so. Indeed, part of the reason there was such confusion over what a general is supposed to shout instead of ‘fire!’ is that historical tactical manuals don’t generally have commands for coordinated bow shooting because armies didn’t do coordinated bow shooting. Instead, archers generated a ‘hail’ or ‘rain’ (those are the typical metaphors) of arrows as each archer shot in their own best time.

More to the point, they could not shoot in volleys. And even if they had shot in volleys, those volleys wouldn’t produce anything like the impact we regularly see in film or TV. So this week, we’re going to walk through those considerations: briefly looking at what volley fire is for and why archers both wouldn’t and couldn’t do it, before taking a longer look at the problem of lethality in massed arrow fire.

This is a sure-fire laugh for any movie that tries to treat archers like musketeers.

Daily Record (UK).

Father Adelir Antonio de Carli, a priest from Brazil, had a rather unconventional idea to raise money for charity.

Natural selection is working overtime these days.

Daily Record (UK).

American model Ginger Meadows travelled to Australia after being inspired by Crocodile Dundee, but the 24-year-old from Colorado was tragically killed in a crocodile attack.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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of New York City near the mayoral residence, was being led out by an FBI agent, he raised his right finger upwards in what media accounts incorrectly described as an “ISIS salute”.

The New York Post called it “a universal salute for ISIS”. But there is no such thing as an ISIS salute. It’s the traditional Islamic salute used during prayers to their deity and, much like “Allahu Akbar” is used by Islamists proclaiming that they represent Allah and are combating infidels.

ISIS beheaders held up one finger after beheading their non-Muslim victims, but so do most Muslims. The ISIS flag, a terrifying black and white chimera to most westerners, simply declares that Allah is the only deity and Mohammed is his messenger: the founding premise of Islam.

The persistent myth of an ‘ISIS salute’ continues to crop up when media outlets try to distinguish between Islam and some imaginary ‘extreme’ version of it represented by Islamic terrorists. The BBC and a UK police force previously apologized for calling the ‘Allah finger’ an ISIS salute.

What the ‘ISIS salute’ lie really reveals is the length to which authorities and the media will go to cover up the Islamic theology behind Islamic terrorism. What the Gracie Mansion bombing suspect likely meant to convey was that the murderous attack had been carried out in Allah’s name, that he was operating under Islamic law, and had no regard for our justice system.

Read it.

Politico published a cartoon on Friday featuring anti-Semitic imagery in an attempt to criticize the war in Iran. The image depicts President Donald Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Republican members of Congress wearing blood-covered Jewish prayer shawls and yarmulkes.

The cartoon, drawn by former New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas, depicts the lawmakers aboard a rowboat labeled “Ship of Neocons”—a play on the Hieronymus Bosch painting Ship of Fools—that is about to plummet over a waterfall. A bag of blood-smeared money crowns the mast, and the word “Amalek,” a reference to a historical enemy of the Jewish people from the Hebrew Bible, appears in the background.

Netanyahu, depicted with an exaggerated nose, is also shown wearing a blood-covered Jewish prayer shawl and eating from a table covered in blood, while Trump, also in a Jewish prayer shawl, is drawn underneath the word “Amalek.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who is not Jewish, is depicted wearing a yarmulke and a Jewish prayer shawl and holding a bottle of blood. Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), also drawn in a blood-covered Jewish prayer shawl, have supported the Iran war and are longtime supporters of Israel.

The cartoon plays on classic anti-Semitic tropes about Jews covertly controlling events, in this case the decision to launch the war in Iran, and using financial exploitation to do so. The exaggeration of Netanyahu’s nose in a grotesque, caricatured style plays on age-old efforts to dehumanize Jews.

The drawing was published as part of Politico‘s “Cartoon Carousel,” which Politico describes as a round-up of the “best” political cartoons of the week.

A spokeswoman for Politico did not respond to a request for comment. Delonas declined to comment, saying he “charge[s] $500 for a 1/2 hour interview and $750 for a full hour.”

Newsbusters.

The Washington Post is a Democrat rag. On Thursday’s front page, the below-the-fold headline on the left was “Democrats continue to reel in victories in special elections.” The subscribers surely loved it.

In the same spot on Friday was “Young conservatives’ bigotry has GOP on edge: Radicalization of youth on the right has set off bitter debate in the party.”

Democrats love a “bitter debate” on the other side.

The online headline was similar, but the subheadline was more specific: “Many Republicans dismiss such party members even as white supremacists like Nick Fuentes gain popularity, but there’s growing unease at their presence in the rank and file.”

Let’s not deny the Republicans have a problem with antisemites in their ranks. Reporter Hannah Knowles quotes Sen. Ted Cruz: that he has seen more prejudice against Jewish people “in the last 18 months on the right than at any point in my lifetime,” and that “it is gaining real purchase, especially with young people.”

But surely Knowles and the Post is not unaware that “groyper” Nick Fuentes has been out there raging against Trump. On March 16: “He needs to go. Like, I really believe that he needs to be impeached under the Democrats. And I don’t even want him to be removed from office because I don’t want Vance to become president either. I want Vance to burn down with all of it.”

On December 28, 2025, Fuentes posted on social media that he’d vote for Gavin Newsom over “fat subhuman” Vance for president in 2028 “100x over just because he’s handsome.”

Why is this nowhere in the story? Because the Post is a Democrat rag.

Read it.

Whether it was the head of a left-wing nonprofit reportedly linked to a Marxist propaganda network connected to a China-based billionaire last week, or Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders on Friday afternoon, there was one common denominator among these “champagne” socialists: their obsession with living an affluent, elitist lifestyle, including flying first class.

When they fly commercial at all.

Sanders has been identified with socialist politics for roughly half a century. He was involved with the Liberty Union Party in Vermont in the 1970s, later became mayor of Burlington in 1981, and by the time he entered Congress in 1991, he was already widely described as a democratic socialist.

Recall last year, the boomer socialist and another unhinged Democratic socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were spotted flying around the country in private jets that cost upwards of $15,000 per hour during their tour to fight billionaires.

Poverty for thee but not for me.

Watch it.

There is nothing new under the sun.

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That “diversity is our strength” is one of those obvious contradictions that people with common sense instantly recognize as hooey. It is poisonous hooey, mind you. As the British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

But the people selling diversity know that.

They champion diversity not because it is a societal bonding agent but because it is the opposite. A culture made up of discordant groups with little in common—neither religion, habits, nor, especially, language—is no culture. Without these sinews tying it together, a body cannot rouse itself and undertake common endeavors.

A nation of groups is thus an oxymoron. In the best of times, it will be a festering federation. In the worst, it will dissolve into warring tribes.

People used to get this. It was part of our popular understanding.

Toward the end of the 1952 Hollywood classic “Ivanhoe,” King Richard the Lionheart asks those assembled before him to kneel as Saxons, Normans, Danes, and Jews and then commands them to rise as “Englishmen.” Nobody had to explain why.

Today, we have set up a system in which we seemingly ask Americans to kneel and then rise as members of groups.