July 30, 2026

HMM: California underwater drone sneaks up on Chinese ‘ghost ship’ off ally’s coast in bombshell video.

Stunning video taken by a covert sea drone shows a Chinese warship lingering inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The 42-second clip shows a ship identified by Reuters as a Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Type 052D guided-missile destroyer, floating 65 miles off Luzon Island in the Bashi Channel on June 16.

The ship was identified by “the deck layout, superstructure, crane and ​mast,” according to the company, “which matched archive imagery.”

Seasats, a San Diego startup, told The Post its drone, the Lightfish USV, was “conducting a commercial operation to prove the feasibility of autonomous operations in the Taiwan Strait.”

Message delivered: You might not even know when you’ve been seen until we choose to tell you.

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

NOT A BAD PAYDAY FOR THE WORST (AND OBVIOUSLY WRONG-HEADED) REBRAND SINCE BUD LIGHT: Cracker Barrel to pay for outgoing CEO’s security, $4.6M severance after failed rebrand.

Cracker Barrel is set to pay outgoing CEO Julie Masino several million dollars in severance pay after her departure from the company, while also covering security costs for a period of time.

The restaurant chain announced on Monday that Masino would step down as CEO on Aug. 10 and will remain with the company in an advisory role until Oct. 9. David Deno will replace her as CEO.

The company disclosed in a transition agreement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Masino will receive $4.63 million over the two years following the end of her employment at Cracker Barrel.

The filing also indicated that Cracker Barrel will continue to pay for Masino’s protective services for a “reasonable period of time” after the end of her advisory role with the company.

What’s her advice, “Don’t do what I did?”

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

KIRA DAVIS ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why do they all have the same glasses? Liberal white women, big glasses, and the legend of Clipboard Karen. “I’ve said it about the weird Antifa looks – blue hair, septum rings, bad skin – and I’ll say it now. This is a uniform. The reason all the worst (public-facing) women look like this is because it’s a uniform. The colorful hair and the nose rings are the rioter-class uniform. The blond corporate cut and the oversized black, square glasses are the manager-class uniform. Same army, different ranks.”

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

HAS THE RE-RECONQUISTA BEGUN?

Posted at 8:21 am by Stephen Green

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: This Is the Fauci Legacy. “It all started so innocently, with the young new director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) denying experimental treatments to the victims of a brand-new infectious disease with a virtually 100% mortality rate. It ended with an aging multimillionaire bureaucrat pleading the Fifth when asked to testify before Congress what day of the week it was.”

Posted at 8:06 am by Stephen Green

WELL, I NEVER DID:

Posted at 7:53 am by Glenn Reynolds

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN FAVOR OF LOCKDOWNS:

In case you don’t, here’s how fast the narrative flipped: Kern County doctors use disputed data to suggest Stay Home orders be lifted.

But at the same time, some doctors say the death rate of COVID-19 isn’t nearly as high as officials are leading the public to believe, and are now calling for the stay home orders to end, and the economy to be reopened.

“There are widespread cases, and a small amount of death,” said Dr. Dan Erickson of Accelerated Urgent Care in Kern County. “It’s similar to the flu, as a matter of fact.”

Dr. Erickson, along with colleague Dr. Artin Massihi, held a news conference earlier this week that is now going viral. They even take shots at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“We’re actually seeing the patients,” said Dr. Massihi. “Dr. Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years.”

YouTube has since removed the video, saying in a statement that they “quickly remove flagged content that violate our community guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.”

—L.A.’s ABC7, April 29th, 2020.

Fast-forward to the beginning of June 2020: The Apex of the Pivot.


 

Posted at 7:46 am by Ed Driscoll

LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE: Dept of Education opens investigation into Minnesota over plan to target young children with gender-swapping trans dolls. “We are deeply grateful the Education Department is taking immediate action to protect Minnesota students from being subject to UMN’s appalling ‘My Gender Dolls,’” said Defending Education Founder and President Nicole Neily in a statement. “It is deeply perverse – and biologically false – to impress upon children that genitalia can be swapped out like Mr. Potato Head parts, with no lasting damage. And for the state to wrest control of these conversations from parents (while using their tax dollars to do so, no less) is truly insult to injury.”

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

OVERPRODUCTION OF ELITES: Degrees of Discontent: How Higher Education Created a Downwardly Mobile Elite: America has produced more credentialed elites than the economy has room for—and the DSA is where the surplus is landing. “Those attracted to the DSA appear to be people whose credentials are misaligned with their economic outcomes. Its members are disproportionately rich in credentials yet occupy positions that fall short of the status and financial success their credentials were expected to deliver. . . . Rather than producing a prosperous professional class, American higher education has produced more graduates with elite aspirations than the economy has elite careers to offer. The result is a growing class of frustrated members of an overproduced elite.”

Kenneth Anderson was onto this back during the “Occupy” Movement (remember that?)

rofessor Kenneth Anderson of American University has suggested that the Occupy movement is best understood as a struggle between the upper and lower tiers of the elite. In recent years, the upper tier, composed of bankers, financiers, etc., has become decoupled from the lower-tier sub-elite of “Virtue Industry” workers in fields like education, nonprofit activism, social work and the like—with the latter feeling betrayed and abandoned.

Mr. Anderson writes: “It was, after all, the upper tier New Class, the private-public finance consortium, that created the student loan business and inflated the bubble in which these lower tier would-be professionals borrowed the money. It’s a securitization machine, not so very different from the subprime mortgage machine. The asset bubble pops, but the upper tier New Class, having insulated itself and, as with subprime, having taken its cut upfront and passed the risk along, is still doing pretty well. It’s not populism versus the bankers so much as internecine warfare between two tiers of elites. The downward mobility is real, however.”

Still true.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

YES, PLEASE:

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green

THE SCIENCE IS UNSETTLED:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 7:07 am by Glenn Reynolds

THIS:

Torches and pitchforks.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

July 29, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds