Lott: Trump's Immigration Enforcement (and Other Policies) Really is (are) Slashing Violent Crime

B...b...but...the Undocumented commit 10,000% less crime than AmeriKKKans!!!!!!

Ed Kilgore: The Dems' "Long-Awaited Pivot to the Left?" [sic]; or Rejection of the Dem Establishment?

What I want to do here is nitpick at a fantastically loony suggestion embedded in the following:

The big debate raging among Democrats this year is whether the renewed energy being exhibited by the progressive wing of the party reflects an ideological development or something else. Unsurprisingly, there are many voices suggesting a long-awaited “pivot to the left” by Democrats is finally underway, as Ben Davis, a Democratic Socialist who worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign, wrote in The Guardian:

After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party’s leadership is deeply out of touch with its base. A leftist wave is cresting across the country. [my emphasis]

 LOLOLOLOLOLOL

A long-awaited pivot to the left????

How far fucking left are you thinking there is left to go?

They're barely balancing on the left edge of sanity as it is...

It is beyond any serious question that the Dems lurched far to the left over the course of the last decade+. It makes little sense to suggest that anyone has been waiting for any such a thing...

Unless, of course, you don't think they lurched far enough...

...or:

Want them to move leftward economically, too.

I think it's probably both...but mostly the latter.

Many Dems are incapable of recognizing/admitting how far left they went...but there's just not a lot of left left, socially speaking, after Women have penises, DEI, mass censorship campaigns and quasi-open borders...

What they seem to want now is for the party go socialist, too.

Or at least what they often mistakenly think is socialism--a Nordic-style expansive social safety net / welfare state...

See, I think economic leftism, confused and disastrous as it usually is, is at least sane--unlike the "Great Awokening." We want socialism is the sophomoric battle cry of losers and the economically uneducated...but, unlike Women have penises and Abolish the police, it's not outright nuts.

Miranda Devine: Democrats Haven't Learned a Thing from the Biden Fiasco

link

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this all to me is that anyone would put a pudgy, doughy pic of himself like that on a hook-up app... 

WSJ: How the Smithsonian Lost America's Plot

Nothing about this surprises me.

I haven't read the report yet, so in some sense I reserve judgment. But I'd actually be surprised if it weren't generally right. A by-now-familiar mishmash of leftist political ideas, derived largely from now-rather outdated Continental philosophy, French literary theory, feminism, postmodernism, and critical theory has become the quasi-official ideology of the intellectual left. These ideas are pretty thin gruel, but they cohere with leftist politics, and they're easy to master. Once you learn a few names and a few simple rhetorical moves, you're set. You can pretend to understand the philosophical underpinnings of any subject, even if you've never read a word of Aristotle or Descartes. It takes little training and even less brains to simply issue an accusation of racism (or sexism...or "transmisogynoir" or WTF ever...) against anything you dislike or disagree with. Name-drop Fanon or Judith Butler. Memorize a few quip-templates like "As Foucault has shown, everything is power," or "It is long past time that we decolonize x." It's much more demanding and time-consuming to refute such bullshit than it is to introduce it into a discussion. And it generally functions like one of those smoke bombs villains deploy in comics and movies--when dialectically cornered, just throw some of that into the discussion and escape in the confusion...

Such ideas are fine to discuss in philosophy seminars--though the time would be better spent on almost anything else. Part of the problem is that the ideas are so poorly-justified and of such low quality. It's more like a collection of curiosities. But to dogmatically accept such curiosities as orthodoxy across so many areas is madness. Bad ideas are one thing. Unquestioned orthodoxies are another. The two together are very bad indeed.

WGL: Statewide Injunction Issued Against VA "Assault Weapon" Ban

Suck it, gun-grabbing VA Dems:

War's Back On

link

Platner: Effete Lefty, Working Class Cosplayer

Honestly, it hadn't really/fully occurred to me that the Woketarian cult still had any illusions about representing actual working stiffs. I recognize it once it's said...but, in fact, as others have noted (I didn't recognize this, either): it's, at its core, a coalition of effete upper-class pseudo-intellectuals and the poor.

The great secret of the last hundred years is that Progressivism is an elitist, technocratic ideology crafted by academia. It has NO working-class foundations at all. This desperate search for a believable marionette is hopeless. https://t.co/67jlMdrSEr pic.twitter.com/jtKhtMxUDV

— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreytucker) July 7, 2026

Emily Sturge: Rice University offers Taylor Swift course analyzing ‘nationalism,’ ‘whiteness,’ and gender

Here's the thing about this:

We see two academic trends interacting:

[1] The tendency to view/teach every topic through the same leftist political (to use their favored metaphor) "lens."
[2] The tendency to make pop culture and other such trivia the object of scholarship and teaching.

The latter fad was, IMO, kind of cool at first--when it constituted a minor deviation/break from weightier/stodgier topics, many of which, one might argue, had been done to death. I fulfilled my lit requirement by taking a course on sci-fi/fantasy. Now, that obviously isn't quite on the order of doing a class on Taylor Swift...but let's say it's in the same general vein. (Note: I made a mistake blowing my only lit course on a genre that's not terribly serious, and that I already knew pretty well. I should have been reading Dickens and Tolstoy.)

   One problem in play is that now these frivolous courses and areas of "research" have proliferated. People are doing Ph.Ds on such shit, and making them their areas of specialization. What was once kind of cool--like a professor making humorous or off-topic asides in class--becomes tedious and destructive when overdone. And that shit is way overdone in the academy now. The proliferation of "Me Studies" is similarly stupid/bad/frivolous.

   Anyway, dumb and wasteful as that latter fad is, it's less bad than the former.

   Look, theoretically, you might have some interesting things to say about pop music. But this sort of thing is--as in the case at hand--usually just another opportunity to beat the same drum the professor is already beating. In this case, at least: "nationalism," "whiteness," and "gender." Race! Gender! Colonialism! Capitalism! Oppression! It's just going to be the same kind of propaganda and indoctrination that they're engaged in anyway...but without reading or studying anything inherently worthwhile. At least in a normal course, the students might be listening to Bach or reading As I Lay Dying... Not that I'm excusing propaganda and indoctrination in those courses. I'm just saying that at least the students might get something from them on the sly...

   To be clear, it's not that every course and every class is such shit...but way, way too many are. It's analogous to Scientology taking over the academy. It would be a disaster if even 5% of courses were given over to it--and if it showed up in so many courses that it was clearly being represented as the academic orthodoxy, the consensus of experts, the taken for granted background...

   I'm tired of hearing myself complain about this BS...but BS it is, and complaining is, IMO, warranted.

Doomer Circlejerk: STOP. USING. AI. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

IT'S MAKING YOU LOSE YOUR COGNITIVE THINKING ABILITIES

Sav Guthrie: Austin's New $125m Public Library Overrun by Bums

Your blue future:

WGL: The Glock Ban: When the DOJ Starts Throwing Haymakers on CA

Trump's Independence Day Speech

I still haven't had the heart to listen to it.

Please let it not be crazy...

Lefties: "Brave Black Woman Surrounded by White Supremacists is Like Rosa Parks!;" Facts: Actually, She Just Committed Some Really Gross Indecent Exposure

It’s been revealed that the black woman Democrats put on a pedestal for “bravely” riding a train with Patriot Front members was engaging in indecent exposure on the train moments before the photo was taken and has a lengthy arrest record. pic.twitter.com/xk0gm1bbmA

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) July 6, 2026

COVID Hysteria, a Very Special Retrospective: IF UR UNVAXXED UR AS GOOD AS DEAD BETTER MAKE A LIVING WILL, CORPSE-BOY

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVAXX URSELF, SHEEPS!!!!!

For the record, I'm still neither pro- nor anti-vax. I asked about getting it two years ago, when I was at the doc anyway...but they had run out.

This crap is pretty typical of our times:

There are hysteriacs on both ends of the spectrum. But the left-hysteriacs control the prestige institutions with the loudest megaphones...so their hysteria is more repulsive.

Though TBF the right-hysteriacs are REEEEEEEEally hysterical... Don't forget about all the microchips-in-vaxxes, 4G and blood clot lunacy. I even read someone in the depths of Free Republic claiming that, if you left the vax out-of-refrigeration, it would resolve into tiny aliens (described as being like teensy versions of the bugs in Starship Troopers...).

   Though it's one thing to find lunacy in the depths of fringey, super-conservative websites...and quite another to find it at Newsweek and Emory and CDC...

Patriot Front Fever...Catch It!

LOL I gotta say, I can see this going either way...but John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte's argument is pretty elegant:

In the same we know the moon landing was real because of it weren’t, the Russians would’ve said so, if these were actual right wingers, the corporate media would have doxxed them by now.

That is a very excellent point.

   We know the right's done similar stuff...e.g. the tiki-torch riot. But we know the left has run false flag ops just like this one--when Dems sent staffers to stand by Youngkin's campaign bus pretending to be tiki-torch-rioters...

   As many are pointing out, one difference between us and the left is that the left supports outright terrorists--so long as they're on the left (e.g. Antifa, BLM rioters, Bill Ayers et al.)...whereas the right thinks these "Patriot Front" clowns are...well...clowns. Or Feds. Or false-flaggots...

   However, some are saying we'd support arresting them...which is false.

   They haven't done anything illegal, no matter which side they're on.

   Let 'em do their thing...whatever it is.

BCP on the Latest Patriot Front Cosplay / Freakout

Honestly, I don't know whether "Patriot Front" is a blue team psyop or not.

We know that the lunatic right has done pretty much this before--in the tiki-torch riot march across UVA grounds the night before the Unite the Right rally. (Reminder: I consider those two things to be very different. UtR proper had every right to rally at Lee Park. They had a permit and everything. I don't know about the legality of the tiki-torch riot...but, to be perfectly honest, I would have had a strong urge to kick their asses...so...maybe I'm inconsistent on this one. So sue me.)

   Anyway, the shrieking lefty just before 1:25 is funny. But the really crazy shit comes after 1:25. Pretty much everything those two jackasses say is gold, baby...GOLD. They compare the picture of the black woman in a subway car filled by the Feds "Patriot Front" guys to a famous pic from integrating Little Rock schools. Now, in the latter pic, a black woman is surrounded by shrieking white racists...whereas in the former pic, a black woman is in a subway car filled with peaceful, polite cosplayers. Hell, even if they're for realz racists, they're not bothering her in any way. Perhaps the best part is when one of the lefties says "it's too early to start talking about Pulitzer Prizes..."

LOOLOLOLLLOL

Which isn't true at all!

Hell, go ahead and give the photographer a Pulitzer!

You get to keep those even if your story (or picture, presumably) turns out to be complete bullshit.

Neither the Post nor the NYT gave back Pulitzers they got for participating in the Russiagate hoax...so even if these guys are all on the SPLC payroll...hey...Pulitzer prize!

Some Grauniad Moonbat: "I Used to Revere the Great Experiment that is the United States; After Trump, I'm Not So Sure"

I went into this with a good attitude, since I think rational people can accept the idea expressed by the headline.

But meh.

Really not so good.

I'm sick and tired of Trump's bullshit.

But compared to the threat posed by the left, Trump's not such a terribly big deal.

Even though I agree that, when NOT compared to the contemporary left, Trump's shenanigans do seem--in some cases at least--to be a pretty damn big deal.

But any such article ought to start out by noting that the left spent the last decade trying to destroy free speech in America--and pretty much succeeded in destroying it everywhere else...

Trump, OTOH--with help from the likes of Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi--smashed those efforts.

He also gave us the best and most consequential SCOTUS of my lifetime.

Also: I pretty much lost interest when the author asserted that the Iran war had left Iran stronger and the U.S. weaker. The latter claim might be worth discussing. The former is pure TDS...

And don't forget: I don't think Donald Trump is fit to be President.

This is kinda the Trump paradox: who can someone so obviously unfit for the office in so many ways be doing such a good job in so many ways?

Well, the obvious answer is: because the other party has lost its fucking mind, and many of his best acts are just rolling back their obviously insane policies. It doesn't take a Washington or a Lincoln to recognize that men aren't women, and that any government programs saying otherwise absolutely have to be slapped down hard.. To take just one notable example...

Well, anyway.

NBC News: "Trigger Warning" for Using the Terms 'Biological Male', 'Biological Female'

What they ought to give is a redundancy warning.

INSANE: NBC’s Craig Melvin offers a trigger warning for trans people watching...

“Just a quick note here. The terms that we’re using here during our reporting, biological male, biological female, the high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent.… pic.twitter.com/Hx15swCfJ6

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 30, 2026

A P-40 Fires Its Guns Again

One of my absolute favorite fighters.

One of my main daydreams as a kid was flying with the Flying Tigers.

Republican and Democrat Coaches on: 'Merica!

Truck Nutz on Air Force One...actually a pretty good idea...

Happy 250th!

I remember the bicentennial well--it's part of what prompted my interest in early American history and American political thought.

Celebrate, ya 'Mericans!