February 19, 2026

THE CORBYNIZATION AND GASLIGHTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOD NAME: X-68A LongShot Air-To-Air Missile-Carrying Drone Moves Closer To F-15 Launch. “General Atomics’ air-launched LongShot drone has made new progress toward its first flight with the completion of various tests on the ground, including a demonstration of its weapons release capabilities. LongShot, now also designated the X-68A, is set to be carried aloft first by an F-15 fighter. The goal of the program has been to explore how an uncrewed aircraft capable of firing air-to-air missiles could extend the reach and reduce the vulnerability of the launch platform, among other benefits.”

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: How Clavicular’s ‘looksmaxxing’ took over New York Fashion Week.

Elena Velez’s F/W 2026-27 New York Fashion Week show centered on “looksmaxxing”: the internet-inspired pursuit of physical perfection at any cost. The runway presentation examined a generation raised under fluorescent ring lights and the judgment of the social-media algorithm. And she capped the night off with a feature from Clavicular, one of the X algorithm’s current favorite characters.

Velez, still in her early thirties, stands out as one of the few designers fluent in the language of the internet. The cultural current is dominated by self-optimization taken to its logical extreme. Faces are flattened into grids, bodies are dissected by comment sections, desirability is quantified in followers, likes and engagement rate. Looks run the show, now more than ever. For the average person, physical appearance now carries the same weight as in the fashion world, shaping how we are judged and valued every day.

Velez also courts controversy, by gathering right-wing personalities and liberal fashion journalists in the same room, such as in her 2023 Longhouse-themed show and her 2024 Gone with the Wind-themed salon (I modeled in both). This creates tension and gives her shows a transgressive charge.

Speaking of tension and transgressions:

Earlier: Clavicular’s cult of ‘looksmaxxing’ speaks to the narcissism of our age.

So why then has this face launched a thousand thinkpieces? Largely because, Clavicular is seen as a player in the Very Online right. Indeed, an evening he spent at a Florida club with Groyper princeling Nick Fuentes and the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan, where they bopped along to Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’, became headline news. Clavicular also runs with an assortment of unsavory characters – anti-Semites, Christian nationalists, ‘redpilled’ acolytes of the manosphere.

But looksmaxxing itself is not an ideology. It is an absence of ideology, a vacuum filled by insecurity. Clavicular is best understood not as a right-wing thought leader, but as a kind of male-to-male transgender influencer. He, like Fuentes, the Tates and all the rest, are caricatures of masculinity.

The ghost of Hermann Goering smiles.

(Classical – and NSFW – reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST DONNY: Can the Gaslighting Get Even More Brazen?

For some reason, the Democrats are arguing that they have never called President Trump a Nazi or a racist, and Pravda is doing their best to back them up.

Perhaps Pravda figures want to deny that they themselves slander Trump all the time. There must be polling showing that their most ridiculous accusations are not helping their cause and are hurting their credibility with all but the most insane folks out there.

 

Flashback: Who is calling who a Nazi?

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats that it almost precludes notice. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s parallels between U.S. President Donald Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his “State of the State” budget address on Feb. 19 hit a new low.

Veering from his speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, he compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

After castigating the president’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker said: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”

Such deceitful criticism of Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. His comments ignore the reality of a president who was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

—Sara Lehmann, Jewish News Syndicate, February 21st, 2025.

In addition to Pritzker’s amnesia, it’s amazing how the previous Democrat candidate for the presidency has been tossed down the memory hole. Here’s the late Jeff Dunetz in October of 2024: Kamala Says Trump’s Like Hitler. Is He? Or Is Kamala An Idiot?

Yesterday, V.P. Harris compared President Trump to Hitler,  “Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses.”

The V.P.’s comment comparing Trump to Hitler indicates she doesn’t care about minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust or she is an imbecile incapable of understanding.

Her comments were based on a story in the leftist magazine The Atlantic reporting that Trump’s former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, called Trump a “fascist” and recalled his admiration for Nazi generals. Kelly also raised concerns about Trump’s recent threats to use the military against “the enemy from within.”

Similarly, another Kamala-supporting ex-general, who, like FDR before him, believes that “fascism” means shrinking government and the welfare state:

As Kurt Schlichter asks at Townhall today: What Do the Dems Do After They’ve Done Their Worst and It Flops?

Where do you go next when you say the worst things imaginable about someone, and it doesn’t matter?

That’s where we are now, and it should be no surprise to anybody who has ever heard about the boy who cried “Wolf.” Maybe the left doesn’t like that fable because they’re assuming the gender of the brat who fakes alarms over dreaded predators and finally gets gobbled up when the dreaded predator arrives, and nobody believes him, her, or them. Regardless, they’re not paying attention to the moral of the story.

Nobody who doesn’t already believe the Democrats believes them now. We’ve had ten years of Trump, and by extension, we patriots, being bombarded with the worst possible accusations and…nothing? Calling somebody “Hitler” should mean something. Hitler was bad, really bad, and to equate somebody with Hitler should be something that one takes seriously because no serious person would casually equate another with Hitler, unless the accused had done something positively Hitlerean. But that’s not the case today. It doesn’t mean anything because everything they say, every lie, epithet and slander, is meaningless. They call Trump “Hitler.” Everybody knows he’s not Hitler. So, no one cares that he gets called “Hitler,” least of all the guy who’s supposed to be Hitler 2.0.

To be fair, we’re here because Democrats have been calling Republican presidents and presidential candidates Hitler since 1944. As with predicting the end of the world since 1970 from global cooling/global warming/global climate chaos, eventually, the hoariest of slurs loses its sting. Perhaps that’s why the latest talking point apparently went out:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THERE’S A LOT OF THAT: ‘Violence Interruptor’ Programs Are Blue State Wishful Thinking, Not Crime Reduction.

After Pritzker touted his meetings with “community violence interventionists” and state-funded “peacekeepers,” praising these “trusted messengers” whose “genuine relationships with the community are crucial to mitigating violence,” some uncomfortable information emerged. As first described by CWB Chicago, one of the “peacekeepers” Pritzker was photographed one-on-one with was apparently wanted on outstanding criminal warrants in four states; worse still, six days after the photo-op, the man was allegedly involved in a high-value commercial burglary culminating in a car crash that killed an innocent motorist.

The awkward photo showing Pritzker grinning alongside the “peacekeeper” has now been removed from the governor’s website. Seeking transparency on how (or even whether) the participants in taxpayer-funded violence intervention programs are vetted, the activist group Judicial Watch initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information from the governor’s office on vetting, background or other checks, and selection criteria both generally and specifically with respect to the “peacekeeper” in the photo-op, including knowledge of his criminal history and warrants. Judicial Watch claims the governor’s office has all but ignored the request, leading to a lawsuit being brought this month seeking to compel disclosure.

There’s clearly no shortage of poor judgment when it comes to these questionable violence interruption programs, even at the nation’s capital.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Affluent White Female Liberals Are Living In A Made-Up World.

In a recent viral video, an angry mob (composed almost entirely of white women) hurled expletives at the staff of a Minneapolis CorePower yoga studio, berating them because they reportedly removed anti-ICE signage. While their verbal onslaught apparently worked in this case, these females revealed just how many women live in a Land of Make Believe where everyone magically bends to their will.

This tiny glimpse into the world of make-believe perpetuated by Affluent, White, Female, Liberals (AWFL) has been a long time in coming; many are waking up to the saccharine dream where the AWFLs can do whatever they want, unscathed, while the rest of us must conform and then clean up their messes. For decades the West has built itself around the ideal life for these women, requiring very little by way of sacrifice, inconvenience, earnest effort, or real scrutiny. In today’s world, it is good to be a victim. It is a made-up world that most of us have grown used to believing is real.

As a famous — albeit — fictional law enforcement official famously said, let’s be careful out there:

UPDATE: And then there are the people who only get their news from their iPhone or iPad: Apple News ‘inflames political polarization’ as it excludes conservative outlets from ‘top stories:’ bombshell study.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

RUN TO DAYLIGHT: Chicago Bears are ‘committed’ to Indiana move. Here’s what would need to happen.

There is now a “shared commitment” to bring the Chicago Bears to Indiana.

Indiana lawmakers announced Feb. 19 that they’ve struck a deal to potentially locate the football team’s new stadium in northwest Indiana, pending the passage of a bill that provides the framework for a financial package and any due diligence at the proposed Hammond site. This comes nearly two months to the day from the team president’s fateful letter that sparked breathless negotiations.

“It represents a transformational investment for northwest Indiana and our state,” House Speaker Todd Huston told the House ways and means committee, sharing that the Chicago Bears are willing to invest $2 billion in a stadium site in the region.

Indiana lawmakers, too, in the form of Senate Bill 27, have outlined a set of investment promises from the state, Lake and Porter counties to bring the stadium to fruition.

“The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date,” the Bears said in a statement. “We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana.”

Presumably, the Bears will keep their Chicago moniker, in the same way that the Jets and Giants are considered “New York” teams, despite playing in a stadium in New Jersey, and the Cowboys have always been the Dallas Cowboys, despite playing outside of the city since 1971, in first Irving, and then Arlington, Texas.

In any case, will the last person to flee the Second City please turn out the lights?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 12:49 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JOANNE JACOBS: Parents say: Bring back pencil and paper.

A small but growing number of parents are opting their children out of using school-issued Chromebooks and IPads, writes Tyler Kingkade for NBC News. They cite “concerns about distractions and access to inappropriate content.”

Parents “point to research showing that students who used computers at school performed worse academically and that information is better retained when read on paper,” he writes. They don’t believe using today’s devices will prepare students to use future technology.

“I want them to be taught through humans,” said Julie Frumin, who lives in a Los Angeles suburb. “I want the teachers to teach my kids — I think they know best.”

After some resistance, the school agreed. Her children get print-outs of assignments, writes Kingkade. ” Instead of playing games on their laptops during free time, they read books.”

“Computers are now ubiquitous in K-12 education,” he writes. Nearly 9 in 10 public schools provide a device for each middle and high school student, as do more than 4 in 5 elementary schools.

Students spend too much time on screens, says David Stein, a math teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s time to think what’s essential and what isn’t.

Indeed.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

ED MARKEY: TRANS ALL THE KIDS!

Presumably, in 2026, Markey isn’t too concerned with any long term consequences to kids having surgery at a young age, because at this point, they only have a few years left:

Related:

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT PLANTS LIKE PLANT FOOD?

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green