March 24, 2026

NO SWEET 16 BIRTHDAY FOR OBAMACARE: Yesterday was the 16th birthday of the Obamacare program, but the only celebrations likely were held in the corporate suites of the healthcare insurance industry.

Posted at 8:56 am by Mark Tapscott

WINNING: Toyota to invest $1 billion to increase U.S. production in Kentucky, Indiana plants.

The new investments include $800 million at a plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, to increase production capacity of the automaker’s Camry sedan and RAV4 crossover. The remaining $200 million is to increase capacity for the Toyota Grand Highlander SUV at a plant in Princeton, Indiana.

“Toyota’s investment in the U.S. is for the long-term, tied to our philosophy of building where we sell and buying where we build,” Toyota Motor North America Chief Operating Officer Mark Templin said in a statement.

Toyota in November confirmed plans to invest up to $10 billion in its U.S. plants through 2030. That came roughly a month after President Donald Trump said during a speech that such an investment would come from the Japanese automaker.

It certainly did.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green

OMNIPOTENT TOURIST SYNDROME:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

I’M LOVING IT.

Posted at 8:21 am by Glenn Reynolds

NEXT!

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Stephen Green

TO BE FAIR, TLAIB SUPPORTING TERRORISM ISN’T EXACTLY BREAKING NEWS:

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll

FAIL, BRITANNIA: The Imperial ‘Woke’ Museum didn’t want to display my war medal collection – at least there’s still one place that values duty, bravery and sacrifice.

So farewell ‘Imperial Woke Museum’, hello National Army Museum.

For those who missed the announcement, the latter has agreed to display my collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs) and George Crosses (GCs), the largest of its kind in the world.

This is the very same medal collection that the Imperial War Museum decided was no longer suitable to exhibit.

I am grateful that the National Army Museum, a mile and half up the Thames, still holds dear values such as bravery, duty and sacrifice.

The ‘Imperial Woke Museum’, however, has other priorities, which is why, after 15 years, it decided from the end of September last year to shut the Lord Ashcroft Gallery.

This was the gallery that, at the request of the IWM, I had spent £5million creating in 2010.

The museum’s new priorities include focusing on LGBTQ+ history. A virtual tour, ‘Exploring LGBTQ+ Stories in Times of Conflict’, was launched late last year.

Britain basically neutered and downsized its once-proud military into near non-existence — was it really necessary to take the degradation ever further?

Of course it was.

Posted at 7:30 am by Stephen Green

HOW WELL DID ICE PERFORM REPLACING TSA AT AIRPORTS? THIS WELL:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

FROM JEFF DUNTEMANN:  The Everything Machine.

 

Carrying 800 passengers and their household goods, agricultural animals, and farm-related supplies to Earth’s first interstellar colony, starship Origen’s hyperdrive self-destructs, marooning its passengers near an Earth-twin planet orbiting an unknown solar-twin star. While settling in, the inadvertent colonists name their world Valeron, and discover that Valeron is scattered with hundreds of thousands of alien replicator machines—but there are no aliens nor any other trace of them.

Each replicator is a shallow 8-foot-wide black stone-like bowl half-full of fine silver dust. Beside the bowl are two waist-high pillars about 8 inches in diameter, one pale silver, the other pale gold. Tap on either pillar, and the pillar makes a sound like a drum, one pillar high, the other low. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any sequence, and something surfaces in the bowl of dust. Simple sequences create simple and useful things like shovels, knives, rope, saws, lamps, glue and much else. Complex or random sequences create strangely shaped forms of silver-gray metal with no obvious use. 256 taps on the pillars can create any of 2E256 different things; in scientific notation, 1.16 X 10E77.

That’s just short of one thing for every atom in the observable universe.

The artifacts are dubbed “drumlins,” for the sounds the pillars make, and the replicators called “thingmakers.” Drumlins have strange properties. Although virtually indestructible, drumlins can change shape, especially when doing so will protect a human being from injury. Drumlin knives will not cut living human tissue, but they will cut living animal tissue or human corpses. Press a drumlin knife against your palm, and it will flow and flatten out to a disk. Pull the knife away, and it will slowly return to its form as a knife. Some claim that drumlins read human minds and grant wishes. Others insist they are haunted by invisible and perhaps hostile intelligences.

After 250 years on Valeron, the colony prospers. Starship Origen is still in orbit, and a cult-like research organization called the Bitspace Institute vows to repair Origen’s hyperdrive and return to Earth. With millions of drumlins catalogued using the thingmakers, Valeron’s people live well and begin to lose interest in returning to Earth. This threatens the Institute’s mission, prompting it to launch a covert effort to undermine public faith in drumlins. A low-key war begins between the Institute and those who value drumlins–including farmers, rural folk, an order of mystical women, and several peculiar teen girls who have an unexplained rapport with the thingmakers and their mysterious masters.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

NO LONGER A JOKE:  Shutdown.

Posted at 6:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

ONLY I’D DISPUTE IT’S NOT “CONSERVATIVE”, IT’S “SANE”:  Hello, Columbus.

Posted at 5:00 am by Sarah Hoyt