August 5, 2026

HAS ABDUL EL-SAYED JUST SAVED TRUMP?

Just a few hours before Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan last night, he told me that he was going to “beat the shit” out of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, in the November general election. His tactic, he explained in a Detroit farmers’ market yesterday, would be to “staple his [Rogers’s] sins to his forehead.” What those sins were, El-Sayed wouldn’t say. He has in the past criticized Rogers as a “corporate shill” who prioritized pharmaceutical and corporate interests over Michiganders while in Congress.

In truth, although he did scrape to victory last night, it was El-Sayed who almost had the shit beaten out of him by Haley Stevens, a mainstream Democrat. Going into the contest, polls gave El-Sayed a 20-point lead. NBC have declared him the winner, but the vote is close. Ballots are still being counted and, at the time of writing, Associated Press has him on 48.6 percent versus Stevens’s 47.3. Stevens, it seems, couldn’t quite “stick it to ’em” as she vowed to do in a viral video.

El-Sayed inspired such little enthusiasm for his progressive agenda that it seems unlikely he can beat Rogers in November. Confidence is also falling in the much-predicted midterm “blue wave.” With so many Democratic candidates standing on a Democratic Socialists of America platform, the fear is that voters will view the party as too radical and it will miss the golden opportunity of slumping Republican poll numbers.

Don’t get cocky.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE RED-BLUE PLANET: ‘Significant areas of Mars may have once been covered by water’: Scientists find hidden clue in Spirit rover data.

Researchers reanalyzed measurements collected by Spirit between 2004 and 2010, revealing widespread traces of crystalline hematite and altered magnetite in ordinary Martian soil — iron-bearing minerals that point to ancient chemical changes consistent with interactions between water and rock. The findings suggest liquid water may have been more widespread across Mars than scientists previously thought, according to a statement from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia.

The team combined hundreds of individual measurements from 32 undisturbed soil sites inside Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed in January 2004, creating the most detailed iron-mineral profile yet assembled for typical Martian soil, according to the statement.

“One of the most important discoveries was finding crystalline hematite in ordinary Martian soil,” Paulo de Souza, lead author of the study and an ECU professor, said in the statement. “This mineral’s widespread presence suggests not only that water was present, but that significant areas of Mars may have once been covered by water.”

How much of it remains as ice is the big question.

Posted at 11:42 am by Stephen Green

THEN THEY’LL PACK THE COURT TO GET IT:

Among other things.

Posted at 11:26 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER: Of Commies, Purple States, and the Elusive Undecided Voter. “All of the above means that the Democrats should be looking at bright skies and clear sailing to victory in November, especially in the House. That’s what those wacky historical trends tell us, anyway. Oddly, the hive mind party has chosen this year to have a full-on family feud. The fight is between the young commies who proudly let their hammer and sickle freak flags fly, and the Dem elders who agree with all of the commie stuff, but would prefer to be more coy about it so that they can dupe undecided voters.”

Posted at 11:11 am by Stephen Green

YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO GO EASY ON COMMIES…:

…because they’ll never go easy on you.

Posted at 10:55 am by Stephen Green

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

And a mindset, too.

Posted at 10:24 am by Stephen Green

THIS WILL END WELL:

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Russia Wants to Quadruple Military Space Rocket Production. It’s Counting on Chinese Machinery.

Russia’s plans to sharply expand production of the Angara launch vehicle depend on large-scale imports of advanced industrial machinery, internal documents from Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, Russia’s leading manufacturer of space launch vehicles, show. A significant share of that equipment is supplied by Chinese manufacturers that also operate in the US and European markets, while the true origins of some brands may be deliberately obscured.

Russia is investing tens of billions of roubles to sharply expand production of the Angara family of launch vehicles, which are used exclusively for missions commissioned by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Its existing manufacturing base is incapable of supporting that expansion, prompting the construction of a new production complex in Omsk equipped with hundreds of new machines.

Internal documents show that a significant part of the project’s technological core will rely on Chinese-made machine tools.

I’m so old, I remember when Russia had a leading space program — and China had hardly any at all.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

RESIST:

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Soy Boy Talarico’s Macho Cosplay Might Be Working. “This is a frustrating one for the GOP. Talarico keeps reinventing himself seemingly by the hour. After months of having his masculinity called into question, Talarico’s campaign people have had him on a ‘butch it up’ photo-op jag of late. They’ve got video of him driving a truck. They’ve got pictures of Talarico chowing down on meat like a man going to the electric chair. That was after he told voters that we shouldn’t do that because it’s killing poor Mother Earth.”

Yes, but…:

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

ABOUT THOSE PAYMENTS TO DEAD PEOPLE: Readers may recall my news story in The Washington Stand last week on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent going forward with a requirement that all payments submitted to his department for issuance be pre-screened for deceased recipients. I noted that such computer database matching is not new and in fact one of President Ronald Reagan’s “junkyard dogs” started it in 1981.

That story also posed the question of why has it taken nearly five decades for the federal government to do what common sense requires, that being stop sending tax-funded checks to deceased recipients? Well, here’s the heart of the answer today on The Washington Stand.

Posted at 8:47 am by Mark Tapscott

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: California scrubs political conflicts of interest from its donation portal.

California’s ethics agency oversees an unlimited, blank-check system of payments solicited by elected officials — including the $347 million Gov. Gavin Newsom has steered through California politics. An investigation by The Center Square has found the state’s “transparency” portal shows the money, but it omits the conflicts of interest.

Voters using the database have no way to search whether donors had business before the government at the time of their donations, even though that information is collected by the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

The omission matters because California caps campaign checks. It does not cap “behested payments.” State law allows elected officials to solicit unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, tribes, foundations and other special interest groups — so long as the money goes to a third party instead of a campaign account.

That means a donor who would otherwise be limited to $39,200 per election for a governor’s campaign can give millions more to a nonprofit, public project, or outside cause if the money is solicited by that same official and reported as a behested payment.

“It’s another way of trying to influence government,” explained Richard Briffault, a Columbia University law professor and campaign finance expert.

You don’t say.

Exit quote: “California’s FPPC was born from a demand for transparency. Voters created the agency in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal to shine light on political money and government ethics.”

Light’s off.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

BUILD THE WALL — AT THE 49th PARALLEL:

(Classical allusion in headline.)

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

MAYBE THEY SHOULD TRY A CEO WHO ENJOYS EATING HAMBURGERS: McDonald’s Announces New CEO As Sales Slide.

Sure, the “Big Arch” wasn’t bad, but they need to concentrate on making their whole menu great — and on improving their service, which is uneven. And bring back the tallow fries!

Posted at 8:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

JASON GUMP: The Cambridge fantasist is proof that stupid intellectuals are poisoning Britain.

I was a visiting professor at the University of Dorking, where my lectures astonished and inspired hundreds of thousands of people. I understand the university now claims I was never a visiting professor, which is unfair. I just said I was “visiting a professor”. Weaponising honest mistakes made by people who only sleep three hours a night as they continue the fight for social justice and raise millions for charity is ableist and disgusting. I am entitled to my feeling, my truth.

As a leading educator, semi-professional athlete, celebrated humanitarian and world expert on the lyrics of Snoop Dogg and the Great Books fallacy of Victorian white supremacist and public-school snob Matthew Arnold, I can say this humbly and with hand on heart. We will not have built a Britain of fairness and equity until people who know nothing, and have very limited ability, are allowed to run everything. The Andy Burnham government is a big sign of hope in that positive direction, but we need to go farther and faster for the sake of our children’s future.

Whether I get an interview for the job remains to be seen – I reckon I’d be terrific, although my obsession with correct spelling and high standards in general may sadly rule me out. The times we live in are so ungrammatical, so sundered from objective reality, so contrary to every diktat of common sense, that it can be a struggle some days to spot what is truth and what is lies.

At least the case of Jason Arday, who, at the age of 37, became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history, presents no such difficulty. Arday is, it appears, an Olympic-grade fantasist.

On the other hand, his* autobiography is likely presold to Netflix:

* “In a statement to the Free Beacon, Julia Prosser, a spokeswoman for the publisher, said the book would be released as planned. Arday, Prosser said, ‘worked closely with his co-writer’—Eve Claxton, who is uncredited on the book’s Amazon page and the corresponding U.S. book cover—’as well as our editorial and legal teams, to carefully research, write and corroborate the narrative.’”

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll