May 14, 2026

WAS THAT A BRAIN JOLT? As the number grows of credibly reported and analyzed Near-Death Experiences (NDE) involving claims of divine experience, folks who deny the existence of deity are scrambling to come up with an alternative explanation. And, according to the Discovery Institute’s Denyse O’Leary, their latest one consists of the argument that such experiences are merely the product of a staccato burst of stimuli in the brain occurring simultaneously. Hmmm.

Posted at 4:11 pm by Mark Tapscott

BAD NEWS FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN TRUCK DRIVERS AND THE PEOPLE WHO HIRE THEM: SCOTUS Decision Hits Shipping Brokers Like a Ton of Freight. “Up to today, trucking companies bore the liability for anything that happened with their vehicle or driver during. Brokers had always claimed immunity from any liability as they were a step removed from ownership. All they did was scheduling – pick up a phone and schedule with Company A or B to get a load from here to there. There were ways to know if said company was in full compliance with DoT regulations, had safety violations, and had paid their insurance bill, but zero impetus for a broker to check. The trucking company was just another name in the book, willing to deliver for the price quoted. A unanimous decision from the Supreme Court today has changed that dynamic and sent a seismic shock through the entire trucking industry.”

Big win for third party inspection/certification services, and the lawyers who will be suing the freight brokers who hire dangerous drivers.

Posted at 3:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds

METAPHOR ALERT:

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

VDH: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism.

Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.

After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.

Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.

It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.

True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.

So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?

There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.

Exit quote:

Any visitor to a contemporary American campus who talks at length to protesting students quickly arrives at two general conclusions:

First, many have been taught to despise Israel and simply parrot the indoctrinated talking points of their professors—“apartheid,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” “settler colonialism,” and so on.

The result is that it is now “cool” on campus to trash Israel, utter the platitude that “hating Israel is not hating Jews,” and then either make life uncomfortable for Jewish students or remain silent when witnessing such harassment firsthand.

Curiously, to build on John Cleese’s Anglo-centric tweet, the reverse does not appear to be true on American campuses:

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHAOS ERUPTS BEHIND THE SCENES OF TRUMP’S CHINA TRIP — including trampled White House aide.

President Trump’s much-anticipated summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been marred by multiple physical altercations just offstage.

Among the incidents that took place Thursday:

  • A White House staffer was trampled by Chinese reporters.
  • A Secret Service agent was kept out of official events.
  • American journalists were prevented from joining the presidential motorcade.

The chaos was all captured by a cameraman accompanying “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner as he prepares to shoot a fourth installment of the beloved feature film franchise.

The dust-ups with the Chinese caused frustrations to boil over on the American side, with one member of the US delegation overheard calling it a “s—tshow.”

Related, from Lee Smith: Strange Trip — The U.S. war against Iran hasn’t ushered in American decline. It’s exposed China’s weakness.

Trump’s tariffs have forced China to find alternate markets for its goods. “But the Iran war,” said the trade analyst, “has stalled the growth of the economies in all of China’s replacement markets, especially Southeast Asia and Europe. All of which means the notion that Trump and the U.S. hold little leverage in their relations with China is complete nonsense.”

Given the damage Trump has inflicted on not just Iran but also China, he could walk away now and declare victory. Together with Israel, the United States has decimated Iranian leadership, destroyed its navy and air force, and collapsed most of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles facilities. Trump could withdraw forces and promise to return if the regime tests his warnings, or he could leave it entirely to the next administration to stop what he’s described as an existential threat that plagues not only Israel and other U.S. regional allies but also Europe and soon the American homeland. But Trump says he isn’t leaving until he gets all the uranium Iran has enriched and dismantles all its nuclear facilities. It seems he really doesn’t care about the polling, gas prices, or even threats to his future freedom, because he’s not budging. The American president Xi is meeting in Beijing is dug in.

Exit question: Game On: Did Xi Give Trump and Rubio a Tacit Green Light on Iran?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM: Gallrein takes the lead over Massie in latest Kentucky primary polling.

Quantus Insights polled 908 likely GOP voters and found that Gallrein holds 48.3% of the voters’ support, while 43.1% support Massie. Just 7.6% of polled voters remained undecided, with the majority of those undecided voters leaning toward Gallrein. The pollster reported that while “the race remains competitive,” their survey “points to a clear advantage for Gallrein.”

“Massie continues to hold a durable base of support, especially among Republicans drawn to his independent brand and willingness to break with party leadership,” the poll analysis reads. “But in a primary shaped heavily by Trump’s endorsement, national attention, and outside spending, Gallrein’s lead on both the initial ballot and leaner allocation shows the Trump-backed challenger in the stronger position entering the final stretch.”

The survey, taken between May 11 and 12, is the first poll to show Gallrein in the lead, as other surveys had shown Massie up by single digits. The trend does not bode well for Massie, who has won every primary challenge since entering Congress with over 70% of the vote.

We’ll find out soon enough.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

SOMALI PIRATES ATTACK AMERICAN WEST COAST:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

BOMBING CHINA’S POPULATION:

DOKOUPIL: America remains the innovation hub of the world. Made in China, yes; but designed and invented in the U.S.A. New drugs, new discoveries, new inventions, new space missions. Xi boasts of the country’s industrial might, and it’s impossible to deny that fact. China’s population is in decline, though, well below replacement rates. Unemployment is high with millions in rural provinces living in poverty, and massive housing complexes that now sit empty.

To paraphrase the lads in the Delta House, China f*cked up, they trusted us – more specifically, they trusted their fellow leftist, the recently deceased Paul Ehrlich, in the 1970s. As did that gold standard of CBS Evening News hosts, Uncle Walter:

[N]ow that Neil Armstrong had walked on the Moon, Cronkite sensed that ecology would soon replace space exploration as the national obsession. CBS News producer Ron Bonn recalled precisely when Cronkite put the network on the front line of the fight. “It was New Year’s Day, 1970, and Walter walked into the Broadcast Center and said, ‘God damn it, we’ve got to get on this environmental story,’ ” Bonn recalled. “When Walter said ‘God damn it,’ things happened.”

Cronkite pulled Bonn from nearly all other CBS duties for eight weeks so he could investigate environmental degradation. He wanted a whole new regular series on the CBS Evening News—inspired by Silent Spring, the philosophy of René Dubos, and those amazing photos of Earth taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts. The CBS Evening News segments were to be called “Can the World Be Saved?” “We wanted to grapple first with air pollution, the unbreathable air,” Bonn recalled. “But then we wanted to deal with the primary underlying problem, which was overpopulation.”

From Douglas Brinkley’s 2012 book, Cronkite: The Definitive Biography of the Legendary News Anchor Who Shaped American Journalism.

(And unwittingly, the CCP’s birth dearth.)

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll