August 13, 2026

THE MANSPLAINERS talk with Terrence Popp who has saved 604 men from suicide:

Posted at 10:15 am by Helen Smith

I REMAIN STEADFAST AGAINST RODENT URINE: ‘Rodent Urine’ & Other Unsanitary Conditions Spark MAJOR Recall Across Multiple Food Brands.

A major recall spanning hundreds of products across multiple industries is raising eyebrows (and clearing pantries) across several states. Gold Star Distribution, Inc. has recalled numerous grocery items, canned goods, medications, and other products due to unsanitary conditions at its Minneapolis storage facility. According to the recall, the FDA found “the presence of rodent excreta, rodent urine, and bird droppings in areas where medical devices, drugs, human food, pet food, and cosmetic products were held.”

As you can probably imagine, that’s a serious health risk.

The facility distributed recalled products to 50 stores across three states: Indiana, Minnesota, and North Dakota. “Exposure to contaminated products can pose serious health risks to consumers, including the potential for bacterial contamination, which may result in illness or infection, including Salmonella,” the recall states. And contamination from rodent droppings isn’t just gross—it can make people sick even from contact with packaging.

Check the link for details if you might be at risk.

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’m Going to Miss Karoline Leavitt Kneecapping the Press Hacks. “Many conservatives of a certain age have a soft spot for the late Tony Snow, and that’s understandable. I think that what sets Leavitt apart is that the Dems’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media she’s had to face have been some of the worst of all time. It’s not just that, though. What has been most enjoyable about Leavitt’s tenure is the obvious delight she takes in correcting the biased, agenda-driven propagandists in the press room.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

MORNING IN AMERICA:

Fast-forward to 2026, and of course, it’s gooder and harder, California: Post walks LA’s once-iconic Van Nuys Blvd. for a week – here’s disturbing scene we found.

Posted at 8:36 am by Ed Driscoll

CDR SALAMANDER: The Small Warship We Should Have Had: They’re right here. “Most are familiar with the rolling train wreck of missed opportunities, bad theory, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and destroyed careers that the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) left in its wake…and still does. Many of us remember the mission set it was supposed to meet compared to the shambolic grabassery it transmogrified into. . . . Yes, there are those who argue that the U.S. Navy has no use for such small ships. Frankly, I’m tired of arguing with them. They are wrong.”

Flashback: Is it time for a big fleet of small ships?

UPDATE: First link was wrong before. Fixed now, sorry! One day I will master cut and paste, but today is not that day.

Posted at 8:35 am by Glenn Reynolds

OH SURE, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO GET A DOORDASH BURRITO THESE DAYS?

Related: The Vibecession Comes for MAGA.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Fat Amy Gets No Respect.

It’s the strike fighter that launched a thousand flamewars, yet somehow keeps succeeding at one mission after another. And might be about to take on yet one more.

“But it costs too much,” they said. “It flies too slow,” which is true. “The helmet is too heavy,” which is weird and also true. “It can’t dogfight.” And my favorite, because it’s the truest: “They never should have tried to make one jet fit three branches.”

Perhaps most embarrassing of all, the pilots who fly the F-35 — officially designated the Lightning II, which I always thought was a lazy name — call it “Fat Amy.”

Yet just in the last week, Lockheed Martin announced another new role for the much-derided fighter: ballistic missile defense. I mean, can something called Fat Amy do that?

And a whole lot more at the link.

Posted at 8:06 am by Stephen Green

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

But then, while Matthews was cashiered out of MSNBC in 2020 for alleged #MeToo issues, as Glenn wrote at the time, “In 2020, He’s Not Crazy Enough for Them…It’s really because he dissed Bernie. The rest is just window dressing.”

Matthews came on after Democratic strategist James Carville went on a diatribe against Sanders, and as the MSNBC host made reference to that, he invoked the historical episode when the Germans overran the Maginot Line and forced France to surrender in the middle of World War II.

“It looks like Bernie Sanders is hard to beat right now,” Matthews said. “I’m with Carville all the way in terms of the dangers of what lies ahead in November. They’re sitting on so much oppo research on Bernie.”

15 years ago, the late Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Politics is still played between the 40-yard lines.” The “American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don’t repeat Obama’s drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.”

No wonder at least one DSA candidate really hates football:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Woke 2.0: Hollywood’s Next Act?

The box office struggled over the past five years, with many wondering if the theatrical model would go the way of the pager and 8-track tape. YouTube creators seized on woke Hollywood’s descent, mocking both the stars who read from the woke gospel to film and TV flops that suffocated on progressive groupthink.

“Lightyear”
“The Marvels”
“The Acolyte”
“Starfleet Academy”

This year, movie goers fell back in love with cinema thanks to “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “Michael,” “Project Hail Mary” and “Toy Story 5,” among other smashes.

Comedy roasts came roaring back, too, and attempts to shame comedians for telling the “wrong” jokes no longer lead to hostage-style apologies.

Yet Ocasio-Cortez’s “Woke 1.0” quip suggested the worst is yet to come. It’s hard to see otherwise, politically speaking. Consider the rise of the radical DSA movement within the Democratic Party.

Woke 1.0 might look quaint by comparison. Will Hollywood follow suit?

Yes… and no.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

JOHN PODHORETZ: New York Magazine’s evil ‘Habibi City’ cover sends a message: Jews aren’t welcome in Mamdani’s NYC.

New York Magazine this week dubbed our town “Habibi City” to mark the rising prominence of Middle Easterners and Muslim immigrants united by fun, frolic — and a consuming hatred of Israel and Jews.

It’s a familiar formulation, harking back to 1966, when newly elected Mayor John Lindsay declared New York to be “Fun City.”

Yes, such fun! Lindsay’s two terms drove NYC into civil and budgetary collapse.

A crime tsunami rotted neighborhoods across the five boroughs, and feckless budgetary policies emptied the city’s coffers.

And the population of Lindsay’s “Fun City” declined by half a million people.

Facing a government that didn’t seem to care what happened to them, much of the middle class voted with their feet.

Something similar may happen in Habibi City, but this time the effort to make life unbearable for some New Yorkers is entirely intentional — and aimed at a specific minority.

Lindsay was incompetent, but he certainly didn’t want respectable taxpayers to leave.

Not so the subjects of New York Magazine’s current cover package, and their beloved Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

At The Free Press, Liel Leibovitz adds: New York Is Not ‘Habibi City.’

[Zaina] Arafat, whose book You Exist Too Much won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction, herself attempts an answer, embodied in the name of one of her favorite SWANA-ese publications: it’s called Bidoun, meaning “without,” which is a name “meant to evoke existing without the concreteness of space.” In other words, because SWANA is really a state of mind, we must make sure America becomes its forever home.

It’s a perfect manifestation of a specific grad school sensibility, light on logic and high on pretense and self-importance. But it also captures the real tragedy—and threat—at hand: For Habibi City to be born, New York City must die.

A question like “what is New York” is too complex, too weighty, and frankly too annoying to discuss in brief. But if you’re looking for a solid working definition, it goes something like this: New York is the gorgeous, impossible, maddening rock upon which dreamers from all over the world crash in the desperate, ridiculous, and absolutely sublime hope of changing their fortune by harnessing themselves to the great American engine of reinvention. It’s why the greatest movie ever made about immigrants in New York, The Godfather, begins with the battle cry that, for centuries, quickened the pulse of every newcomer to this city: “I believe in America.”

Tell that to Arian Moayed, an actor who tells Arafat, with unveiled disgust, how terrible it felt to walk around Times Square in the aftermath of September 11 and see everything, and everyone felt so. . . patriotic. Tell that to Arafat herself, whose vision of life in America consists exclusively of SWANA loyalists railing against “xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism.” Or, for that matter, tell that to New York magazine, once the epitome of New York cool and sophistication and now the organ of Third World feeblemindedness masquerading as radical chic.

Which is all the more ironic, because Tom Wolfe introduced the phrase “radical chic” via a 1970 article he wrote for a very different iteration of New York magazine. Long after Wolfe moved on, I still used to like that version of New York magazine, and would pick up a copy when I lived in New Jersey and took the train into Fun City during the Ed Koch and David Dinkins era.

But that was then. Today, as Ira Stoll writes at the Washington Free Beacon, “James Murdoch just demonstrated that Rupert Murdoch sure was right to fight a protracted legal battle to prevent him from taking over the Wall Street Journal and Fox News:” Under James Murdoch, New York Magazine Tilts Toward Hamas.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

TURNING ON THE DSA:

Posted at 7:08 am by Glenn Reynolds

POLLS THESE DAYS ARE EQUAL PARTS INEPTITUDE AND PROPAGANDA:

Okay, maybe not equal parts.

Posted at 7:03 am by Glenn Reynolds