August 28, 2026

TAKING IT ALL DOESN’T WORK: New analysis from Cato Institute shows taking every penny made above $1 million is way short of covering even one year of the federal budget deficit. So much for “taxing the Rich.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Mark Tapscott

GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass orders cops to stop cracking down on illegal street vendors.

Under fire Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is ordering local police to stop giving criminal citations to controversial street vendors who don’t follow city rules.

Bass is facing a tough reelection campaign after fending off a challenge from Spencer Pratt in a jungle primary, now going head-to-head with leftist Councilmember Nithya Raman.

Her administration is asking the LAPD to dismiss any past criminal citations that were incorrectly given and to no longer issue the citations in the future.

As of 2024, there are over 50,000 vendors across the city and only 687 with active vending permits.

Bass told the California Post that she ‘stands firmly with street vendors’ and wants to protect them from Donald Trump’s illegal migrant purges.

‘Street vending is a quintessential part of LA’s world-class food scene and a livelihood for thousands of hardworking Angelenos. Supporting LA’s street vendors is more important than ever given ongoing attacks by ICE,’ Bass said in a statement.

Criticism came from brick and mortar business who believe the illegal vendors cut into their bottom line, especially around big events like the World Cup or the coming 2028 Olympics.

Adam Carolla, call your office: “Once cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles do this—once you essentially look the other way for the homeless, junkies, illegal immigrants, criminals, or whoever it is, while shining a spotlight on taxpayers with over-regulation, over-permitting, and trying to manage every grain of their lives, versus saying to illegal immigrants, ‘Go do whatever you want,’ or to the homeless, ‘Go shoot up wherever you want or sleep wherever you want’—then you’ve lost it. L.A.’s there. San Francisco’s there.”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

CYBERSECURITY: ‘We have a limited window’: 116 companies, entities sign on to major AI cyber defense push.

Sophisticated AI models, capable of orchestrating agentic attacks in minutes, have upended the cyber industry in recent months, cementing the need for better security tools to combat mounting AI threats.

Open-source AI platform Hugging Face, which signed the letter, was recently at the center of a breach orchestrated by rogue OpenAI agents. The hack rattled the cyber and tech sector, raising questions over accelerating AI development.

Amid this backdrop, cybersecurity companies have skyrocketed in value as businesses recognize the security need and have managed to brush off earlier disruption concerns that rattled the broader software sector this year.

And sometimes they escape and attack without prompting.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

A REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN AD IN THE MAKING:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

SHIP OF FOOLS:

Classical reference in headline:

But, to tell the truth, I’d never met any Old Leftists. I expected them to be admirable and nasty, like Lillian Hellman, or brilliant, mysterious, denying everything, like Alger Hiss, or —best of all—hard-bitten and cynical but still willing to battle oppression, like Rick in Casablanca. I did not expect them to be the pack of thirty fussing geriatrics I met at Kennedy Airport, misplacing their hand luggage, losing their way to the ladies’ room, barking at the airline personnel, and asking two hundred times which gate we’d have to be at in three and a half hours.

They were leftists all right. In between palsies of fretting, they’d tell you how wonderful the Soviet Union was: pensions were huge, housing was cheap, and they practically paid you to get medical care. Believe me, you haven’t been bored until you’ve been buttonholed by a seventy-year-old woman who holds forth all afternoon on the perfidies of American foreign policy and shows you pictures of her grandchildren. These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.

“Progressivism” — where time stands still.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll