August 5, 2026

YES: It’s High Time We Restore Martha Stewart’s Gun Rights. “It makes little sense to deny Martha Stewart, who has the financial means to employ armed private security for her safety, the right to personally possess a firearm,” the Grassroots NC brief says. “Even more questionable is why Donald Trump cannot possess a gun when he currently commands the most powerful military in the world.”

Posted at 12:44 pm by Stephen Green

THIS:

“There’s always a choice!” the wise man once said. “This one is a choice between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ — which is a difference much more poignant than that between ‘good’ and ‘better.'”

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

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