December 21, 2025

NOT ADMITTING THE OBVIOUS: BBC Can’t Admit the Obvious. “The Australian Broadcasting Corporation insists that the Bondi Beach terrorist attack had nothing to do with religion. Not to be outdone, the British Broadcasting Corporation says, ;Hold My Beer,’ and refuses to admit that the Intifada(s) were all about killing Jews.”

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GUNS FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE:

Posted at 5:43 pm by Stephen Green

ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THAT IT’S BANNING GUN OWNERSHIP BY PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T DO IT: The Key to Gauging Public Safety is Measuring Time-To-Effective-Resistance. “The people who commit these kinds of mass murders tend, fortunately, to be morons. “Speed, surprise, and violence of action” cuts both ways. They rely on it to get the jump on innocent people, but they are ill-equipped to be on the receiving end.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WE NEED A TOTAL AND COMPLETE SHUTDOWN OF AUSTRALIA UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE:

 

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

JOHN NOLTE: RINO Romney Calls for Tax Hikes, Raising Retirement Age.

Here are his suggestions for outright tax increases…

“I long opposed increasing the income level on which FICA employment taxes are applied (this year, the cap is $176,100). No longer[.]”

Currently, once your income reaches that $176,100, the government stops taking taxes for Medicare and Social Security. It sounds like Romney wants to tax people no matter how much they make.

He also argues for closing loopholes, increasing the estate tax, and similar measures.

This has always been Romney’s problem.

Actually, two of Romney’s problems.

The first is that you can always count on him to eventually cave to Democrats. There’s death, taxes, and Romney caving to Democrats.

Second is his dazzling lack of imagination.

How do we fix entitlements, Mitt?

Uh, raise the retirement age and tax increases.

Way to think out of the box, Mitt.

America cannot tax its way to either prosperity or fiscal solvency. Tax increases always-always-always slow economic growth, which — and this is key — decreases tax revenues. Romney acknowledges this and then, without evidence, wrist flicks it: “Yes, taxes can slow growth. But most of the measures I propose would have a relatively small impact on economic growth.”

In other words, I’ve acknowledged it, so I don’t have to really address it, you know, because I acknowledged it.

As the late Robert Novak famously said, “God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don’t do that, they have no useful function.” But Romney himself can pay more in taxes anytime he’d like:

Bush 41 is, however, an object lesson in how Republican presidents are treated by Democrats should they accede to their wishes, and increase the taxes that Americans are paying: Clinton attacked Bush from the right for raising taxes.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DANIEL GREENFIELD: Tucker Carlson: “Attacking Millions of Americans Because They’re Muslims, It’s Disgusting.”

Building up to a furious pitch, Tucker ranted against what he called “attacking millions of Americans because they’re Muslims, it’s disgusting. And I’m a Christian. I know there’s effort to claim I’m a secret Jihadi. I’m not. You should not attack on those grounds. And you’re seeing that from Republicans. What the hell are you doing?”

What the hell are they doing? They’re doing what Charlie Kirk was doing? Speaking the truth and standing up for America, Christianity and the West.

America’s Newspaper of Record believes that Tucker may be overselling, just slightly, his newfound change of heart on the Religion of Peace™:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

OLD AND BUSTED: Statue Toppling Endorsed by College Professors and Once Respectable Publications.

The New Hotness? JFK’s Niece Kerry Kennedy Vows to Remove Trump’s Name from the Kennedy Center with a ‘Pickax.’

More members of the Kennedy family are speaking out after President Donald Trump added his name to the Kennedy Center this week.

Following a controversial vote by a MAGA-friendly board, workers officially added Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center’s exterior on Friday, Dec. 19. They tacked on “The Donald Trump and” above the previously-existing lettering, which reads, “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and JFK’s niece, took to X after photos of the new addition went public.

“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder,” she wrote. “Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”

Sounds awfully violent and destructive, but that’s par for the course for her family’s lineage. As RFK said in March of 1968, “If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.”

I like Ike; let’s rename it after him. But assuming we don’t have a President Vance or Rubio in office four years from now, Democrats will be working harder than Winston Smith in the Ministry of Truth to airbrush President Trump two terms of office out of existence.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: First wheelchair user goes into space. “A German engineer has become the first wheelchair user to go into space.Michaela Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, crossed the Karman line, the internationally recognised boundary of space, during the 10-minute Blue Origin flight. Ms Benthaus, 33, from Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein, suffered a spinal cord injury in a mountain biking accident seven years ago.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

ROGER SIMON: J. D. Vance Has a Tucker Carlson Problem.

Is Tucker’s cognitive disorder Qatar’s doing? Maybe partly, but it is J. D. Vance’s problem. Currently, he and others are unable to shake themselves free of Carlson’s celebrity and the attendant charisma that remains.

If they don’t, it could sink the Republican ship. I’m not just talking about the Jews, many of whom were in the process of shifting to the GOP or already had, only to be repelled by Tucker’s antisemitic ravings, but also about the evangelicals who constitute a much larger backbone of the Republican Party. Without them, they are lost.

As many have noted, demography is destiny. Among Jews, the more orthodox are the fastest-growing segment, obeying the biblical admonition to be fruitful and multiply. The others, like most secular people, are having fewer children. The orthodox have long been the most conservative and by far the most likely to vote Republican—until the advent of Tucker’s screeds.

Exit quote: “This places J. D. Vance in a box. He must separate from Tucker and his followers, but he must do so subtly to avoid escalating the already percolating civil war. I sympathize with his dilemma.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

WILD:

Posted at 9:35 am by Stephen Green

STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM: Waymo Suspends Service in SF Amid Blackout, Driverless Cars Basically Give Up.

And block everyone else. “Traffic lights across the city were down, seemingly confusing the driverless cars — and halting them in their tracks. Riders and pedestrians posted videos of Waymos stuck at intersections, long lines of drivers behind them.” Time for a backup plan.

UPDATE: Not entirely surprising:

Posted at 9:27 am by Glenn Reynolds