June 13, 2026

CHATTANOOGA READERS: If you live in Red Bank, my former student Meredith Mochel is running for city judge. She’s smart, hardworking, and fairminded and would make a great judge.

Posted at 8:07 am by Glenn Reynolds

NO, I THINK IT CAN STILL GET WORSE: Just When You Thought the Platner Tattoo Scandal Couldn’t Get Worse…:

The fact that Graham Platner had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for nearly 20 years should have been disqualifying. Instead, all the enthusiasm from the Democrat Party base was for him, and he won the Maine Democrat Senate primary on Tuesday. He will now face incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the fall. At this point, Platner has managed to get away with the tattoo in part because the Democrat base is antisemitic anyway, but also because he’s claimed he had no idea what the tattoo meant.

Now, another former girlfriend has come forward, and the Nazi tattoo scandal just got so much worse.

The former girlfriend, who spoke to the New York Post but was not named in the story, is a self-identified leftist. According to her, Platner knew exactly what the tattoo represented and kept it deliberately. Her account blows a massive hole in his story. Platner has insisted he didn’t recognize the symbol until last fall, but she says that’s a lie. She confronted him about it directly.

“As a person who is a leftist, I immediately looked at him and asked him, ‘Is that a Totenkopf?’ and he told me a whole, ‘he will hold this weight forever’ bravado sob story about how it was, but he decided to keep it as a reminder that the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas,” she told the Post.

Think about that for a second. He kept a Nazi tattoo as an anti-American statement. He knew it had Nazi origins, kept it for years, and used it to express contempt for this country. And Maine Democrats just voted to make him their Senate nominee.

Not just Maine Democrats; game respects game:

 

Related: Curiously, the socialist who’s looking to go national is proposing a blitzkrieg on technological advancement:

 

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll

I WOULD SAY GO SCORCHED EARTH, BUT THE DEMOCRATS ALREADY GAVE US THE PALISADES FIRE: It Isn’t Over. Spencer Pratt Just Declared War.. “Hey morons, I didn’t get in this for political power. I got in this to expose this corrupt machine, and nothing has changed.”

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

SPACEX ROCKETS TO $2 TRILLION VALUATION* ON STOCK MARKET DEBUT:

SpaceX shares rocketed after Elon Musk kicked off the biggest stock market listing in history, valuing the company at more than $2 trillion.

The rocket company’s stock surged by 25pc when it began trading on the Nasdaq in New York after successfully raising $75bn (£56bn) through its initial public offering (IPO).

Investors who were able to get hold of stock at the initial $135 price saw the company’s shares leap to $169 in opening trading as they floated on public markets for the first time.

SpaceX’s new valuation on Friday minted Mr Musk, its founder and chief executive, as the world’s first trillionaire.

Thanks to his SpaceX stock and his shares in electric car business Tesla, Mr Musk’s net worth now sits just north of $1tn.

* Like Musk’s rockets, “valuation” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here:

In any case, Jimmy Kimmel is big mad: Kimmel: Elon Musk Is ‘An Immigrant Who Has Been Stealing From Us’

All of that setup took 41 seconds for a joke that got a mild laugh. He then went into another long set up for helping people conceptualize a trillion dollars.

A trillion dollars. It’s hard for our brains to conceptualize that. I mean, we know a trillion is a number but it’s so large we can’t fathom it, the same way we know that Elon has a lot of kids but we can’t fathom him getting laid, right?

Let me try to illustrate it. If you tried to count out loud to a trillion you would be counting until the year 33,736. A trillion dollars is ten billion hundred dollar bills. If you stacked them up the pile would be almost 700 miles high, as tall as 123 Mount Everests. With that kind of money Elon could buy every NFL team…he could buy all 30 Major League Baseball teams, every NBA team, every Wendy’s every Target store, the Beatles entire music catalogue. He could buy Nike, Macy’s and every Hyundai Elantra ever produced.

All of this presents the idea that maybe Elon has a Scrooge McDuck vault where he keeps his stacks of $100 bills, but of course that’s not why he’s a trillionaire. He’s a trillionaire because he created and owns a portion of two successful companies, one that revolutionized the car business and one that revolutionized rocket flights to orbit and global satellite communications. His money isn’t a stack of bills, it’s ownership of these valuable companies. He can’t buy up all the country’s sports teams unless he wants to first sell all of his ownership of his own companies.

Kimmel probably knows this but the real story isn’t as good as the image of a stack of bills 700 miles high if your goal is to demonize someone. And that leads up to his final comment.

Elon Musk came to the United States from South Africa in 1995, the son of a humble emerald mine owner and he is so grateful to this country that allowed him to become a trillionaire, Tesla paid almost no federal income tax over the past three years. You know, for a guy who has been openly cheering immigrants getting kicked out of the country for stealing form us, sure seems like an immigrant who has been stealing from us to me.

Tesla employs more than 70,000 Americans. SpaceX employs another 22,000 and thanks to Musk all of them are doing very well. In fact, the cafeteria workers at SpaceX are expected to become millionaires this week.

The Times reported that some of the workers who could see life-changing wealth include hourly blue-collar employees who worked at launch sites. Bloomberg’s Jessica Karl put an even more striking image on it, writing that the SpaceX cafeteria is about to be full of millionaires (2).

“I guess it’s too late for me to pivot careers to become a food service specialist in Brownsville, Texas,” Karl joked, referencing an online post (3) that says “SpaceX’s IPO is expected to create 4,000 new millionaires, including some cafeteria workers whose compensation packages include employee stock options.”

Kimmel also despises people angry over having their homes burned down by an incompetent communist mayor: Jimmy Kimmel’s Cruel Attack on Spencer Pratt, Explained.

Kimmel didn’t wonder why the city’s super-slow counting methods apparently reversed the Pratt/Raman electoral odds. He couldn’t question how Raman’s lethargic campaign suddenly caught fire, surpassing vote totals for both Pratt and Bass.

Nope. Instead, he danced on Pratt’s electoral grave. Literally.

First, he invoked President Donald Trump. Of course.

“…the MAGA crowd is now using this to try to claim the election was rigged.”

What sane person doesn’t suspect foul play? Does Kimmel really believe Raman suddenly came out of nowhere to beat Pratt the way she did?

Doesn’t he sense foul play, too, even if he preferred the outcome?

Next, he remembered that Pratt vowed to leave the city that allowed his house to burn down should he lose the race. So Kimmel kicked him on his way out the door.

“And Spencer, if you’re watching, we are so, so sorry to see you go. We’re going to miss the hell out of you. You’re a man of your word, and you gotta go.”

“I know things might be tight right now, especially with the out-of-state donation money running out. Moving is expensive, so to help you out we rented you a U-Haul,” Kimmel joked. “Our staff spent the whole day decorating for you, and everybody will notice you and wave goodbye as you leave.”

…Mazel Tov and goodbye, Spencer Pratt!”

We don’t expect laughter or comedy from Kimmel any more. He’s a propagandist, and a dishonest one at that. This felt just mean and vindictive, a terrible look for any public personality.

Pratt, never one to stay silent, had the last word.

Kimmel has reached Arthur Godfrey-levels of ego and rage:

In 1953, Godfrey’s infamous on-air firing of cast member Julius La Rosa permanently damaged his kindly, down-to-earth, family-man image which resulted in an immediate decline of his popularity that he was never able to overcome. Over the next two years, Godfrey fired over twenty additional cast and crew members, under similar circumstances, for which he was heavily attacked by the press and public alike. A self-made man, Godfrey was fiercely competitive; some of his employees were fired for merely speaking with those he considered to be competitors, like Ed Sullivan, or for signing with a talent agent. By the late 1950s, CBS reduced his on-air presence to hosting his daily radio show, which ended in 1972, and the occasional television special.

But then, Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon know they’re the last late night network TV hosts standing. As Stephen Kruiser asked last month: Now That Colbert Is Gone, Can We Start the Clock on Kimmel? “Kimmel will no doubt use Colbert’s absence as an excuse to become more execrable than ever. ABC can keep him afloat for a while. The network is still a for-profit business, though, and not a weeknightly charity for the Democratic National Committee. ABC execs will almost certainly take a cue from their counterparts at CBS. Kimmel’s petulant attitude won’t do him any favors, either.”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Elon Musk is a Genius — and a Litmus Test.

“SpaceX’s IPO created 4,400 millionaires, according to the New York Times. Critics like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren have created one each — themselves.”

Related (From Ed): Question asked and answered:

Posted at 7:13 am by Glenn Reynolds

June 12, 2026

DOING IT AS THE WORLD CUP KICKED OFF HAS A SPECIAL RESONANCE:

Posted at 11:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Elon Musk is a Genius — and a Litmus Test.

“SpaceX’s IPO created 4,400 millionaires, according to the New York Times. Critics like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren have created one each — themselves.”

Posted at 9:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds

RIP: Gene Shalit, Mussed-Up Movie Critic of the Today Show, Dies at 100.

Gene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and lively use of puns in his movie reviews, died Friday. He was 100.

Shalit, a mainstay on the NBC morning show for four decades until his retirement in November 2010, “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his family said in a statement to NBC News.

Shalit started as a book reviewer on Today in 1970 and went on to replace Joe Garagiola on the desk three years later. Working alongside the likes of Hugh Downs, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric, Shalit proved to be a spirited counterbalance to the heavier news of the day, entertaining audiences with celebrity interviews and insights into moviegoing choices during his “Critic’s Corner” segment.

Exit quote:

Posted at 8:43 pm by Ed Driscoll

DEMS’ “EPIC FAIL” IN ANTI-ICE CAMPAIGN: They spent multi-millions of dollars on paid protestors, masterfully coordinated talking points with allies in the non-profit/NGO and Mainstream Media communities, and maneuvered every which way but forward for months. And what did they win?

“ICE and Border Patrol will be funded without the changes Democrats were demanding, including requiring judicial warrants to enter homes and prohibiting officers from wearing masks. The package also lacks reforms with bipartisan support, such as requiring officers to wear body cameras.

“Not only is this standoff ending without Democrats achieving the reforms they pressed for, the agencies will be insulated from additional pressure through the appropriations process for three years.”

The preceding quote is from one of the Dems’ key allies, NPR, so reading it must be tough for them. But that’s nothing compared to the analysis of the I & I crew. Do not miss the “cherry on top.”

 

Posted at 8:18 pm by Mark Tapscott

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Pokémon Go players unwittingly contributed to tech with military drone uses. “A decade after the global craze for Pokémon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones. That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks.”

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green