Not Satire: Biden Administration Used Tax $$ to "Make Maps More Gay"

Every time I get fed up with Trump, I am reminded how insane the alternative is...

The U.S. Military is Downright Terrifying

If I were China or Russia, I'd be crapping my dra'ers.

Honestly, the U.S. military is just not to be messed with.

Our guys are very, very, very fucking good at this stuff.

The Austin Mass Shooting Was Probably Terrorism; Start Carrying

Links are easy to find and I'm in a hurry.

I don't like to carry, and ordinarily have no need to. I live in a low-crime place, and I can take care of myself just fine without a gat under anything like normal conditions.

But maybe we should all carry a bit more as a community service. The Austin shooting was pretty clearly Iran-inspired terrorism.

Iran War: Good Idea or Bad Idea?

I'm thinking about it...but...just for the record...I don't know.

Both, probably.

I don't have anything like all the information Trump et al. have. 

No war gets presumption, of course.

And, as others have noted, Trump et al. haven't even really tried to justify this publicly.

It wouldn't be that hard to get me on board. The Iranian regime is godawful (as it were). And, were the decision up to me, I expect that slaughtering tens of thousands (?) of their own people protesting for freedom would have been the last straw.

Or...funding and training Hamas for 10/7...that was just about the last straw, too...

Lots of last straws with these motherfuckers...

OTOH, I don't know enough about Iran to know what we can expect if the regime collapses.

I certainly don't want another wave of ME refugees to Europe...though Persians fleeing an Islamic theocracy >> than...well...you know...

So basically I don't know and there's no practical way for me to learn enough in the next six months to have an informed opinion.

Forced to say something, I might say: We know what Iran's trajectory was like before this. This doesn't seem to be at all like the idiotic Iraq debacle. These guys have made it clear what their endpoint is like. Our options are: waste 'em now or let 'em wipe out their people, stockpile more missiles, and build nukes... Don't forget that they turned down our offer of basically unlimited reactor fuel in favor of enriching their own uranium...and there's only one plausible reason for that...especially given their vast oil reserves... And, as I understand it, the regime is basically an apocalyptic death cult...so...there's that...

No good options, it seems.

But maybe the option we've taken is the less-terrible one...

But I do not know.

VA Supreme Court Allows Vote on Gerrymandering

I don't understand the legal arguments, but this challenge was based on the bullshit wording of this bullshit amendment:

Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

"Restore fairness" my ass. Also probably my ass: temporarily. The only way to make this temporary is to kick the Dems out of power.

Scumbags.

Anyhoo: the wording is bullshit, and if the voters fall for this, then they're bullshit too.

Probably the only hope for this state is to reverse the retrocession, which would move 400k Democrats--and that's just the living ones--back into DC.

Noem Out

Now do Bondi...

Charles C. Cooke: James Talarico's Creepy Synthesis of Christianity and Woketarianism

link

No offence to my Christian homies...but I actually think this is a pretty natural combination--and I've been told that it's afflicted many American Churches.

It may be wrong--but is it really that much of a stretch to analogize "whiteness" to original sin? (Though then it would only afflict some of us, of course.)

Anyway, woketarianism is already right on the verge of being a cult/religion...so this really doesn't surprise me all that much.

Anti-ICE VA Dems Get Another American Killed

They've lost their collective mind...as I may have mentioned...

And, as if this even needs to be said anymore: Spanberger is no moderate.
link

Wagon Wheelz-N-The-Hood

Fat Amy Gets Her First Kill?

Was the Eagle Shoot-Down Intentional?

An obvious question...though I've been steering clear of it.

Kuwaiti F-18 Apparently Shot Down the Three Strike Eagles

As the story notes, this coheres better with some of the other evidence: e.g.:

That the Eagles were hit at all

That they seem to have been hit in the tail(s)

That all crewmen survived.

If the Hornet used Sidewinders, the Es might not have been locked up, or might not have realized it. If they were locked, they might not have thought it was that serious. Sidewinders fired from behind are more likely to hit the tail. And they have relatively small warheads. (Older Patriots have fragmentation warheads, IIRC; newer ones are hit-to-kill; but in either case, they're going to make a much bigger mess of things they hit than a Sidewinder.)

PilotPhotog on the 3/2 al Jahara Strike Eagle Shootdown

The consensus:  fog of war. Saturated electronic space. Mudhens don't have passive IR detection.

Suggestion floating around: it was some kind of IR SHORAD, not Patriots--which might explain why all three (?) were hit aft.

This is a channel I've just recently started following, so I can't vouch for it.

I'm, of course, waiting for Alex Hollings to tell us what happened...

F-15 Friendly-Fire Shootdowns: The Silver Lining

Patriots work...

Bing West: Drop Weapons to Iranians

Yeah, I've been wondering about this.

And I'd add: surely we already have some contacts with Iranian resistance.

And you think Mossad hasn't been cultivating such links for decades?

3 USAF F-15Es Shot Down by Friendly Ground Fire Over Kuwait

story

Two chutes visible in the one incident we have on video, looks like both crewmen survived.

Don't know anything else.

[addendum: CENTCOM says Strike Eagle shoot-down incidents were friendly fire.]

Ed Driscoll Rounds Up Some Lefty Crazy Re: Iran / Operation Epic Fury

link

It's becoming more and more difficult to distinguish progressivism from mental illness.

Which is not to say that any opposition to this thing is crazy or wrong.

I have little idea whether we're doing the right thing or not.

But Driscoll is absolutely right about the papier-mache puppets. 

Hegseth Declares Anthropic a "Supply-Chain Risk," Restricting Military Contractors from Doing Business With AI Giant

Boy, this does not sound good.

Kinda sounds like Hegseth is being unreasonable...but...that's nothing but an impression.

I do not understand what's really going on...

The Trump Administration in Yet Another Nutshell: Dr. Oz and "Transing" Children

link

Trump appoints an unqualified celebrity to an important post.

The blue team freaks out.

Unqualified celebrity proceeds to do a much better job than the progressives who previously occupied similar posts--at least in certain important respects...

Look, I made fun of this appointment. I still make fun of it. And I don't know how good a job Mr. Oz is doing overall....but his appointment was, we must now admit, far less of an outrage than the slew of roughly similar Dem appointments that preceded it-- e.g. during the Biden administration. Appointees who supported the brainwashing and sexual mutilation of children...

   This is basically Trump's greatest strength: he is not insane. Merely being not-insane--implementing non-insane policies and appointing non-insane people--has made him an enormous improvement over the Dems.

   As goes without saying, however, he has not been an unalloyed blessing...

David Brady: Mission Not So Accomplished?

I guess I didn't think any of this had to be said.

Yes, absolutely.

This could end up being an Iraq-like disaster.

Though:

This time we had much better reason for attacking.

and

I really don't think we're going to put "boots on the ground."

We really only had two bad options.

And Trump chose one of them.

Carolina 89 - VA Tech 82

Nine of the last eleven.

I didn't think they'd do this well without Caleb.

Steven Tucker: NHS: National Hostage Situation

DEI is just a catspaw used to advance the cult's ideological capture of institutions.

Fraser Meyers: "The UK's New Grooming Scandal"

What madness is this?

General Assembly Dems Attack VMI

Jackasses.

Behold, the Left: Crazy Granny Edition

Can the West really survive such idiots?

Operation Epic Fury Hits Iran

The question is really: is this the worst option, or merely the second-worst option?

The latter is my guess...but what do I know?

Hanford and Friday: "States Rip Families Apart to Serve 'Transgender' Ideology"

So much for "families belong together"...

It's baffling that anyone ever believed this abject insanity, baffling that it managed to turn itself into a kind of orthodoxy largely just by screaming at people who questioned it, baffling that it captured a major political party, and baffling that it's held on for well over a decade...

    It was insane the second it was first mentioned. It's rather difficult to think of something more obviously false...yet here we are, in 2026, still fighting it. The left knows that if it just holds on and maintains a beachhead in the culture, it'll have a good chance of surviving.

   I'm beginning to doubt that sanity will ever return to the majority on the American left, including the Democrats. I haven't completely given up on them. But I no longer think that a return to sanity is inevitable.

Israel, U.S. Attack Iran

Saw this at about 1:30 (?) this morning.

Well, the die is cast.