July 20, 2026

July 19, 2026

BULWARK BOTTOMS OUT:

I understand the frustration Bulwark staffers are feeling, now that their favorite candidate for the Senate and for 2028 has suffered his downfall:

UPDATE:

As “Cockburn” of the Spectator asked in 2020, a month before Covid hit: Why do NeverTrumpers think they can run the Democratic party?

Posted at 11:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

COMMUNISM HASN’T BEEN DONE RIGHT. (Yeah, That’s The Ticket.)

What is most encouraging about the near-guaranteed success of the upcoming implementation of communism/socialism, i.e., it being done right? The cast of characters:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14): Armed with an overpriced Boston University international relations degree, her pre-political résumé boils down to slinging cocktails and a pathetic home-based children’s book startup that died instantly.

Rashida Tlaib (MI-12): Textbook career grifter who leveraged her law degree into instant taxpayer-funded state gigs and cozy progressive nonprofit sinecures.

Ilhan Omar (MN-05): Glided from a political science degree straight into municipal nutrition busywork and policy aide handouts—a lifelong parasite on government institutions. Though, to her credit, she prepped for her Feeding Our Future fraud by having a background in nutrition.

Ayanna Pressley (MA-07): Dropped out of college to latch onto congressional staff gigs and city council, scoring a flawless lifetime on the government teat with zero private-sector contamination.

Greg Casar (TX-35): Vaulted from elite campus activism into a decade of cushy municipal/federal paychecks, utterly unburdened by anything resembling private-sector reality.

Summer Lee (PA-12): Weaponized her law degree exclusively for pro-protest organizing and activist directing before sliding into legislative luxury.

In his 1976 article, “The Intelligent Co-Ed’s Guide to America,” Tom Wolfe wrote:

The publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, however, was a wholly unexpected blow. No one was ready for the obscene horror and grotesque scale of what Solzhenitsyn called “Our Sewage Disposal System”—in which tens of millions were shipped in boxcars to con­centration camps all over the country, in which tens of millions died, in which entire races and national groups were liquidated, insofar as they had existed in the Soviet Union. Moreover, said Solzhenitsyn, the system had not begun with Stalin but with Lenin, who had im­mediately exterminated non-Bolshevik opponents of the old regime and especially the student factions. It was impossible any longer to distinguish the Communist liquidation apparatus from the Nazi.

Yet Solzhenitsyn went still further. He said that not only Stalinism, not only Leninism, not only Communism — but socialism itself led to the concentration camps; and not only socialism, but Marxism; and not only Marxism but any ideology that sought to reorganize morality on an a priori basis. Sadder still, it was impossible to say that Soviet socialism was not “real socialism.” On the contrary — it was socialism done by experts!

Concurrently, IngSoc was not having much luck in Old Blighty in the 1970s. But I’m sure the current crop of DemSoc wiz kids will get it right this time around.

Posted at 6:52 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH THE FOUNDERS KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING:

Posted at 6:08 pm by Stephen Green

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Provocative Lake Oswego theater’s marquee message about Jews provokes criticism, worry.

A Lake Oswego [Oregon] movie theater known for provocative marquee messages drew rebukes from members of the Jewish community this week after its latest sign compared Jewish history to “The Odyssey,” the ancient Greek epic that inspired Christopher Nolan’s newest movie.

The marquee for the Lake Theater & Cafe in downtown Lake Oswego read, “Before there were the Jews, there was The Odyssey,” ahead of the film’s highly anticipated release Friday.

The message was removed from one side of the marquee on Thursday but remains on the other side, according to local residents who saw it Friday.

The foremost criticisms of the marquee missive included that the statement was incorrect – and that it might spark antisemitic acts, such as the death threat scrawled on Northwest Portland’s Congregation Beth Israel building in 2022.

“It’s historically inaccurate. That’s the first piece,” said Rabbi Eve Posen of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Southwest Portland. “It’s a movie that doesn’t need much to get people to come see it, so why the theater would make this decision knowing that it’s historically inaccurate makes no sense.”

Historians generally date “The Odyssey” to the eighth or seventh century B.C.E., while the Jewish people predate that period by centuries.

Posen said she began receiving complaints Wednesday morning from congregants who were offended by the message. Others in the community also were outraged by the theater’s message.

In an email to the theater, West Linn resident Abby Farber wrote: “I think your marquee advertising ‘The Odyssey’ contains an inappropriate reference to Jews. If it’s an attempt at humor, it falls flat. Moreover, in this era of rising antisemitism, I think it’s also highly distasteful to everyone who is a fair-minded person.”

Farber continued: “What do Jews have to do with this piece of fictional art? Why bring up a religion? Definitely not funny.”

Wait until the owners of the theater discover who invented the idea of longform motion pictures adapted from an important novel or story as well, long before Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey.

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH VAN JONES IS A VOICE OF SANITY:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

BABYLON BERLIN, THE NEXT GENERATION: Transgender neo-Nazi assigned to women’s prison, despite wearing a mustache and being biologically male.

“A neo-Nazi who claims to be transgender has been sent to a women’s prison in Germany despite being suspected of mocking gender self-identification laws,” reports The Telegraph. It is Sven Liebich, a biological male who still has a mustache:

Marla-Svenja Liebich – who was born a man and named “Sven” before registering as a woman – was extradited on Wednesday from the Czech Republic to a prison in Chemnitz, Saxony.

The German far-Right provocateur, who has been photographed at rallies in a Nazi-style uniform, disappeared last August.

He had failed to attend a different women’s prison to serve a one-and-a-half-year jail sentence imposed in 2023…

The following year, while appealing against the sentence, the 55-year-old registered as a woman, exploiting a reform that made it easier to change legal gender.

His “transition” was widely seen as intended to mock the self-determination act…The reforms introduced by [Germany’s] centrist coalition simplified the process of changing a person’s name and gender on official documents.

Liebich, who now appears in public wearing women’s clothing and a moustache, claimed the gender change and request to serve the sentence in a female prison were in order to avoid “discrimination” from male inmates.

A male neo-Nazi was sent to a woman’s prison in Germany? Kamerad, you have no idea were a Nazi-curious politician almost went in America:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

GREAT CLEANER: Affresh Washing Machine Cleaner. #CommissionEarned I use this between washes and it keeps the washer from getting stale.

Posted at 3:02 pm by Helen Smith

OLD AND BUSTED: “Kids in Cages.”

The New Hotness? Meat in Cages! California Walmart locks up pricey meat to fight shoplifting.

First it was spray paint. Then eye drops. Now, even ground beef is under lock and key.

A San Jose Walmart has reportedly taken anti-theft measures to a new level, placing pricey cuts of beef and even packages of ground meat inside metal security cages to keep would-be shoplifters at bay.

Influencer Tony Bartleson — better known online as “Meatdad” — posted a video from inside the California store showing rib-eye steaks and ground beef wrapped in wire security devices.

Holding up a cowboy rib-eye priced at nearly $16 a pound, Bartleson quipped: “Welcome to California.”

The video also showed a three-pound package of ground beef locked inside its own metal cage. The clip has racked up more than 3.8 million views.

Bartleson said he was stunned by the response.

“Seeing basic food items locked behind cages is sad,” Bartleson said in a statement to The Sun.

“My hope is that we can get to a point where measures like this aren’t necessary anymore—where people don’t have to steal just to eat, stores don’t have to lock up food, and everyone has reliable access to the necessities they need.”

“I think most of us want to live in a world where people can put food on the table with dignity, and I hope we continue moving in that direction,” he added.

It’s not so much the wire around the meat, as the anti-theft tag attached to it, which trigger the store’s alarm if someone tries to tamper with it, or shoplift it.

Mr. “Meatdad” was quoted above saying, “I think most of us want to live in a world where people can put food on the table with dignity, and I hope we continue moving in that direction.” No, thanks to leftists in Sacramento, California is moving away from that direction. In December of 2022, Virginia Postrel wrote in the Wall Street Journal: What Shopping Did for American Equality.

The urban palaces of early department stores, the climate-controlled corridors of suburban malls, the endlessly scrolling pages of Etsy, the utilitarian aisles of Walmart and the chatty reveals of haul videos aren’t merely sites of envy or exchange. They’re places where Americans—both buyers and sellers—work out who we are and who we want to be. Since the mid-19th century, modern retailing has tested the practical meaning of equality and freedom.

When A.T. Stewart opened his multistory dry goods store in 1846, the Manhattan merchant introduced two revolutionary practices that we now take for granted. He let anyone come and browse freely, whether or not intending to buy, and he charged every customer the same price. Both policies changed the everyday meaning of social equality.

At Stewart’s, wrote a journalist in 1871, “you may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.” The store and its many emulators established a new social norm. Any well-behaved patron, regardless of class or ethnicity, could freely examine the merchandise without being pestered or pressured to leave.

Unfortunately, there are less and less “well-behaved patrons” and more and more looking to fleece businesses – sometimes on an industrial scale – and thus more and more goods enclosed in cases and security tags.

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll