The paper of record

Babylon Bee: "Trump Asks Democrats At Correspondents' Dinner To Hold All Assassination Attempts Until He Finishes Speech." 

Code word: Madagascar

Legal Insurrection: "College Professor’s Clever AI Trap Uncovers Rampant Cheating" - “The average grade was 96, with 40 students obtaining a perfect score. That compared to a midterm average ranging between 65 and 80 in previous years.”

Genius: he posted in white text a nonsense instruction to include the word "Madagascar" in an essay about the Industrial Revolution.  Thirty-two students just cut and pasted it into AI and spit out an essay they didn't even bother to proofread.

Not so long ago

Twitchy: "Elon Musk Told a Journo That Open Borders Dems Weren't Always Crazy (and Video Backs That Up)."

Specifically on immigration. 

Extra - Atlantic magazine 2024: "How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration"

Cui Bono?

NY Post: "Democrats pick South Carolina for first primary of 2028 in possible boost to Kamala Harris, dethroning Iowa and New Hampshire."

Good for Kamala!  I can think of another person who benefits if Kamala is the nominee.

These two clowns

Reason: "Zohran Mamdani Tells Jon Stewart Socialism Is Just Having a Library - Please stop letting these people lie about what their preferred economic system entails." 

Can we all appreciate the courage of Mamdani to appear on Jon Stewart's hard-hitting interview show?  So brave.  So stunning.

Makes sense to me, what's your problem?

Legal Insurrection: "Columnist Invokes Emmitt Till Murder to Attack Caitlin Clark - You know, just when I thought leftists couldn’t sink any lower, they do."

I don't even blame the columnist.  I blame the so-called editors at USA Today who allowed this tripe to be published in a national newspaper.

Elon to media: you suck

Red State: "Boom: Elon Delivers Mic Drop Moment Against the Media During Fiery Interview."

$17 for a Subway sub

That's it: the headline is the story.

I was in a hurry tonight so I got a footlong BMT and with tip it was $17 and change.  Maybe that's why the store was completely empty at 6:30pm.  I know the days of the "$5 footlong" are long past but, c'mon man.

Frankenstein's monster

Sasha Stone: "The Democrats Have a Communist Problem"

I’ve said it many times, and it only gets truer by the day: there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them. Godspeed, Republicans, Conservatives, and MAGA.

They made this bed. All of them called Trump a fascist for ten years too. They have dropped the seeds into this fertile ground. They should not be that surprised that weeds are cropping up that are too strong and too fast-moving to stop, even if they will kill the garden.

We're entering an election season where Democrats are going to have to show up at debates and answer simple questions like "is Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal?" or "should we enforce immigration laws?" or "should biological men be allowed in women's sports?"

And they won't answer.  Their only goal is to get through 90 minutes without ever having to explain where they stand on any position.

Like this:

Theater kids

Fox News: "Mamdani sets internet ablaze with video explaining cave on plan to arrest Netanyahu: 'What a joke'."

Just playing to the anti-Jewish base, that one.

Another masterful interrogation from Gill

Legal Insurrection: "White Supremacy, Mickey Mouse, Politeness: Rep. Gill Takes on Smithsonian Director - “Ma’am, are you a white supremacist?”

GILL: Yes, under your leadership, it has been used as a reference. Is Mickey Mouse racist?

HARTIG: Mickey Mouse is not racist.

That's a relief.

You will pay for Medicare-for-All

Washington Post editorial: "Medicare-for-all means taxes-for-all - Billionaires don't have enough money to foot the bill."

Lots of eye-popping statistics in this editorial. 

Choosing Texas

Hot Air: "California Loses Another Vital Defense Contract to Texas."

Ideological diversity at the Boston Globe

I went into this article in the Boston Globe with high hopes: "On this 250th anniversary of America, how should a liberal feel about her country?"  It started out well:

My first visit was with Beverly Gage, a Yale University historian whose new book, “This Land Is Your Land,” recounts a year she spent road-tripping around the country, visiting historic sites in preparation for the country’s 250th anniversary.

“Whether or not people on the left like patriotism, it exists, and it’s a powerful, powerful force,” she told me when I visited her home in Connecticut for an interview. “To step aside, roll your eyes, to disengage, is not only, I think, a disservice to the people of the past but is also to concede a lot of things that I don’t think people on the left or liberals should concede to — that America is this one thing.”

I can get behind that!  Yes, patriotism is a powerful force and (most) Americans love their country.

Let's get another perspective:

I asked Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley...

Oh Lord.

...about how she connects to the idea of patriotism, and she told me that one of the most patriotic things she’s ever seen was the Black custodians cleaning up the mess left behind by the January 6th insurrectionist mob who trashed the United States Capitol.

Of course.  We might as well make January 6th a national holiday at this point, the day where the government nearly collapsed to a bunch of middle-age men armed with MAGA hats and heart medication.

Moving to our last stop in this journey of patriotism:

To close out my series, I visited the Chelsea High School history fair, where freshmen presented projects on different chapters of American history. Chelsea is ground zero for ICE raids in Massachusetts, and I was curious how these kids — Chelsea High is 90 percent Latino — are processing various truths about American history while the American present bears down on them.

Unsurprisingly, the students were focused on eras that echo the chaos and xenophobia of America today. I saw at least three projects on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a law that incentivized the capture of Black people in free states whether or not they were runaways.

Yeah, unsurprisingly indeed.  Victimology is the new coin of the land and the study of our oppression must never cease.  I wonder how many displays at that history fair showed the other side of the American Civil War: men who left their homes to march and die fighting to free men.  Probably zero.

After Donald Trump won the first time in 2016, shocked journalists pledged to spend more time in "flyover country" to better understand the people outside their intellectual echo chamber.  But they've learned exactly nothing.  Instead they stay firmly within the Bluesky tribe with a Yale historian, a Democrat representative, and some kids in Chelsea.

No viewpoints outside this sample size are required.

Game for the ages

Um, I decided not to watch the World Cup bronze game today.

Highlights on YouTube:

It was never "alive" to begin with

Townhall: "Iran Just Killed the Memorandum of Understanding."

The problem with negotiating with Iran is that nobody knows who is in charge.  The civil government is regularly undermined by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who is being directed by a gay ayatollah in a coma.

I'm leaving today

Jonathan Turley: "“Start Spreadin’ the News”: New York Losing Billions as Millionaires Flee the Big Apple." 

If you "make it here, you can make it anywhere" is true.  You can make it in Florida or Texas.

Extra - Get ready for the Texas Stock Exchange:

The Wall Street Journal reported in recent days that the Texas Stock Exchange is now officially open for business, and trading is expected to start soon. Everything is big in Texas, as the saying goes, so New Yorkers should take this rival stock exchange seriously.

In some ways, the idea that Dallas could become the new financial center makes sense. Texas has no income tax. New York City has the highest income tax, capital gains tax and dividend tax. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is threatening even higher "soak the rich" tax increases as part of his goal of making NYC a socialist mecca. Housing will be free, groceries will be free, health care will be free, buses will be free.

This isn't Democratic socialism. This is unmitigated socialism.

New York was already losing to Texas before any of this happened. Over the past decade, nearly 2 million residents of New York state have fled. Many of them are now in Texas. New York has lost almost $1 trillion of income cumulatively over the past 12 years.

Sadly, these socialists will never learn.  These cities will go bankrupt gradually, then suddenly.

The source of much eye-rolling

Washington Post: "The rise and fall of a corporate fad - DEI mentions took off in 2020 and started collapsing in 2024." 

The important thing is that feelings weren't hurt

Hot Air: "Progressives in Cambridge, Mass Eliminated Shot Spotter. There Were Consequences."

Grinding gears

Washington Post: "The death of the stick shift is almost here - Driving a manual vehicle is a lost art. Hopes of a revival have fallen flat. With the rise of EVs and autonomous vehicles, only a few die-hards are holding on."

Less than 1 percent of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 were stick shifts, according to preliminary government data. At just 0.6 percent, it was an all-time low.

My first car was my father's hand-me-down Volkswagen Rabbit which (nobody recalls) had a helpful "shift up" light in the center of the dashboard console.  Soon the knowledge of operating a manual transmission will fade from memory like an ancient language.

NDAs? For an internal meeting?

PJ Media: "Democrats Are Panicking and Scrambling to Hide Something Big."

The DNC had their own officials sign non-disclosure agreements before a finance meeting.  The scuttlebutt is that the DNC is deeply in the red with debt exceeding money on hand. 

The intolerance factory

Hot Air: "Bluesky Gave Up on Competing with X."

Bluesky's actual problem is the one that no one there wants to talk about. It is a political silo for left-wing extremists that has a reputation for death threats and cancel culture. In fact, the last time I noticed something happening on Bluesky was when Popehat was banned for suggesting it would be good if someone murdered Elon Musk.

The stories I've heard about Bluesky is that the slightest deviation from the most left-wing positions will trigger a swarm attack like something from "The Birds."

Swalwell's pal

NY Post: "Swalwell pal Sen. Ruben Gallego had sexual relationships with two House staffers, sources reveal to The Post."