December 11, 2025

OPEN THREAD: You know what to do.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

KURT SCHLICHTER: There’s Nothing Funnier Than Fussy, Furious Euroweenies.

Hearing disturbingly feminine, Somali corruption-curious Minnesota governor Tim Walz complaining that, because of Donald Trump, people are driving by his house shouting “Retard!” should’ve been the funniest thing that happened over the last few news cycles, but our European friends have done it one better. Actually, they’re not our friends. They’re annoying layabouts who do nothing but whine and complain as they feed off the corpse of the civilization they inherited like cultural trust fund babies. They have gotten very upset because Donald Trump’s national security strategy accurately recognizes that Europe is unable to defend itself and is increasingly unworthy of us squandering more time, blood, and treasure to do it for them. So, they’re lashing out, threatening to be responsible for their own defense.

Yeah, that’ll show us. Throw us in that briar patch, Horst. There aren’t enough “LOLs” on the Internet for how funny it is to see you stomping your feet because we’re done picking up the check.

This is personal to me because I’ve spent a substantial part of my life doing the jobs that Europeans would not do. From November 1988 to April 1991, with a multi-month tangent to the Persian Gulf War, I was part of NATO in what was then West Germany. It’s always great to have people tell me how important NATO is when I was part of it, and they weren’t, but let’s put that aside. I was there at the end of the Cold War. We were still doing things like having REFORGER exercises and going out on alerts at 3 a.m., where we would shiver in our assembly areas knowing that if the balloon really went up, our role was to die in place so the locals could continue to consume strudel and bitch about Ronald Reagan. Then, for a year between 2004 and 2006, I left Irina with a little kid and went to Kosovo to keep those Europeans from killing each other. I got a non-Article 5 NATO medal out of that. None of this makes me some sort of hero – in Germany, I ran a heavily armed car wash, and in Kosovo, I largely shared my legal and business experience with the locals. But I was away from America and my family, cleaning up Europe’s messes for the Europeans. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a little gratitude for my time – and the time of millions of other Americans.

Spoiler: There’s never going to be any gratitude. There can’t be. The fact that we uncouth hicks from the New World had to come back to unscrew the mess the Europeans have made of Europe was never going to get us anything like a simple danke schön. That they needed us grated on them then, and it grates at them now that big, loud Yankees were the only thing keeping their sorry butts from chaos.

British expat Charles Cooke adds: Europe Is Delusional.

Criticize a European from America and you will immediately be hit with a wall of undeservedly self-righteous disdain. This should not be mistaken for pride; rather, it is that peculiar, negative, defensive sort of hauteur that is focused less on the positive virtues of the speaker, and more on his deeply held conviction that, whatever his deficiencies, at least he’s not you. That, at root, is the contemporary European mantra — At Least We’re Not American — and, like many mantras, it is impervious to fact or repudiation. What about the massive gap in GDP that has opened up between the U.S. and Europe since 2008? At least we’re not American. What about the anemic performance of European companies relative to those in the United States? At least we’re not American. What about the gulf between GDP per capita in Europe and GDP per capita in the United States, or about the U.S.’s great advantages in biotech and energy and advanced semiconductors, or the fact that, if most European countries were to join the U.S., they’d have a lower standard of living than people do in Mississippi, or that the average European is six times more likely to die from a lack of heating or air conditioning than an American is from a gun, or that most European countries are unable to usefully project military power? At least we’re not American.

As Cooke concludes, “Why, pray, do Europeans tell themselves that? Because, if they didn’t, they might have to account for their failures, and because that would require a capacity for introspection that they simply do not possess.”

It’s been a lopsided battle for quite some time. A quarter century ago, Tom Wolfe wrote: “European labels no longer held even the slightest snob appeal except among people known as ‘intellectuals,’ whom we will visit in a moment. Our typical mechanic or tradesman took it for granted that things European were second-rate. Aside from three German luxury automobiles—the Mercedes-Benz, the BMW, and the Audi—he regarded European-manufactured goods as mediocre to shoddy. On his trips abroad, our electrician, like any American businessman, would go to superhuman lengths to avoid being treated in European hospitals, which struck him as little better than those in the Third World. He considered European hygiene so primitive that to receive an injection in a European clinic voluntarily was sheer madness.”

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S LIARS AND GRIFTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN:

Posted at 8:56 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SALENA ZITO COVERS ACTUAL NEWS:

Posted at 8:54 pm by Glenn Reynolds

KAMALA REACHES STAGE FIVE OF THE KUBLER-ROSS MODEL: Did Kamala Just Admit That Her Political Career Is Over?

Instead of being unburdened by the past, as she so often exhorted us to be, Harris seems content with her place in it. “I understand the focus on ’28 and all that. But there will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.”

This isn’t conceit or braggadocio. It’s a simple statement of fact. There are actually busts of all the vice presidents, from the first, John Adams, right up to “Richard B. Cheney,” in the Senate wing of the Capitol. There are no busts yet of Old Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Kamala, or JD Vance, but they’re likely on the way.

This is not precisely an honor; it’s just a list, an observation that these people held a certain office. This is clear from the fact that all the vice presidents from Adams to Cheney are included, including Spiro Agnew, even though he resigned in disgrace (and was actually a tardy addition for just that reason); Aaron Burr, even though he shot and killed Alexander Hamilton; and J. Danforth Quayle, even though he couldn’t spell “potato.”

Kamala Harris’ pointing out that her bust will one day join this illustrious company was tantamount to saying that her political career is over. And maybe it is. So even if her 2028 presidential run is already a bust, she can console herself with the fact that she’ll always have her bust.

Still though, we’ll have to thank Kamala for inadvertently giving Herbert Hoover’s long-forgotten veep some new and well-deserved recognition: Fact check: Charles Curtis holds spot as first person of color as vice president.

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW DEATH STAR FLAK TOWER NEARING COMPLETION:

Sure, it looks intimidating, but it’s got to be tough enough to survive the neighborhood:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

“Y’ALL NEED TO GIVE THAT WOMAN SOME GRACE.”

Posted at 6:06 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: One Cheer for Colonialism! “It is unseemly, untimely, unjustifiable, distasteful, and surely flat-out wrong to offer even one cheer for colonialism. So here I go.”

As promised earlier this week, right here on Instapundit.

Posted at 5:24 pm by Stephen Green

F-35 Talks With Turkey Could See ‘Breakthrough,’ U.S. Ambassador Says. “Barrack’s post is the first official signal from the U.S. side that talks about a return to the F-35 project could be underway. Turkish media had previously reported it would be discussed when Erdogan and Trump met in the White House in September. Asked by a reporter if he could revive Turkey’s cancelled F-35 deal shortly after the September meeting, Trump replied: ‘I could do so easily if I want. We may do that. Well, it depends. [Erdoğan’s] going to do something for us.'”

Is Erdoğan going to stop playing footsie with the Kremlin? Because that would be nice to see from an ally.

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

GREAT MOMENTS IN ENVIRONMENTALISM: AOC splurged nearly $50K on pricey hotel stays, dining and renting Puerto Rico concert venue where Bad Bunny performed.

In all, the campaign forked over $15,489.77 for lodging in Puerto Rico between July 1 and Sept. 30.

At least $10,743.13 was spent on meals and catering services on Aug. 25 and Sept. 29, per the FEC filings for that period.

Elsewhere on the island, the 34-year-old Bronx and Queens Democrat danced alongside Brooklyn Rep. Nydia Velázquez at an Aug. 10 Bad Bunny concert held in San Juan as part of the anti-ICE rapper‘s “Residency tour.”

Is this some sort of On the Beach-style last minute blowout decadence while waiting for the world to come to an end? Because otherwise, based on her many doomsday pronouncements in 2019, it doesn’t sound like an environmentally friendly way to spend one’s free time. To coin an insta-phrase, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. And in the meantime, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOODER AND HARDER, SILICON VALLEY:

To revise and extend the remarks by the late P.J. O’Rourke, you can’t get good Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and tech employees are fleeing California. That’s all you need to know about communism.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

REMEMBER PACIFIC PALISADES? Newsom wouldn’t budge on his duplex ban for the Los Angeles wildfire rebuild. So, a YIMBY group is suing him.

The lawsuit, filed by YIMBY Law on Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges the governor unlawfully restricted homeowners’ ability to rebuild after the fires by allowing local governments to set aside Senate Bill 9, a 2021 state law that permits duplex construction and lot-splitting on single-family-home parcels.

Newsom issued his order in July in response to lobbying from property owners in the Pacific Palisades, the coastal L.A. community that was largely destroyed in the blazes. Palisades residents argued that allowing duplexes and spitting lots into two parcels would undermine the neighborhood’s character and worsen evacuation efforts in the event of future disasters. Following the governor’s order, all the jurisdictions affected — the cities of Los Angeles, Malibu and Pasadena and L.A. County — banned SB 9 rebuilds in high-risk fire areas. The suit includes each local government as a defendant as well.

YIMBY Law, which is based in San Francisco and sues public agencies to clear the way for more housing, had agreed in discussions with high-level Newsom staffers late last week not to file its suit if the governor allowed duplex construction again after a year, the group’s executive director Sonja Trauss told POLITICO.

When Newsom did not act, the group turned to the courts.

They f***** up — they trusted Newsom.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

HISTORY:

Posted at 3:04 pm by Stephen Green