May 6, 2026

DEI IS A SCAM.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Ukraine could lift arms-exports ban this year as would-be buyers line up.

Vadym Ivchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker for the Batkivshchyna party, told Defense News a political consensus on the need to allow Ukraine’s defense industry to launch export sales has emerged across party lines.

“Meeting the needs of the defense forces as a top priority is a fundamental condition for all sides. Only after that can the sale of surplus be considered to attract investment,” Ivchenko said.

The lawmaker said that, as Ukraine’s president has already approved the so-called Drone Deals framework, Ukraine is now officially coordinating export details at the state level.

“Therefore, 2026 can be considered a realistic timeframe for launching the first contracts. Of course, delays are possible, but it is important to understand that this would lead to idle production capacity, which is an unacceptable luxury during wartime,” according to the politician.

Ivchenko said drones of various types are expected to become the Ukrainian defense industry’s flagship export products.

Making yourself an indispensable part of other countries’ pressing defense needs isn’t a bad way to get them to invest in your national survival.

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

Posted at 4:36 pm by Stephen Green

JAMES KIRCHICK: The Strange New Respect for Jew-Haters.

By far the starkest example of the budding alliance between the far-right and the far-left is the strange new respect some progressives express toward Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. Like Greene, it wasn’t so long ago that Carlson was a hate figure for progressives, and one of his biggest haters was a man named Cenk Uygur. Founder of a progressive media company called “The Young Turks,” Uygur denounced “fake” progressives who praised Carlson as late as 2022. “Tucker Carlson doesn’t agree with us at all,” Uygur declared. “He uses the fact that most of the country agrees with progressives as a tool to sheep-herd them into right wing talking points.” In 2019, Uygur attacked Carlson for displaying a graphic on his Fox News show depicting then–CNN head Jeff Zucker as a puppet master. “That is a deeply antisemitic trope, it goes back in history a long time, of the Jews being puppet masters,” he said.

Uygur felt similar disgust for Owens, the comically deranged podcaster who claims that Brigitte Macron is a man and who recently alleged that “satanic Zionists occupy the White House and Congress.” For spreading disinformation about Covid-19 in 2021, Uygur screamed, “I said it, Candace Owens, you’re the worst of the worst! You’re a sellout! You’re scum of the earth!” Uygur went on, “People like Candace Owens lead pathetic lives because they’re paid to sell their own identity out.” In 2024, Uygur accused Owens of deploying “over-the-top antisemitic tropes.”

Fast-forward a year, and Uygur has changed his mind. “No, I’m not going to denounce Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens!” he declares. “We don’t have to denounce her at all. Don’t come at me about denouncing Candace Owens until you denounce Jared Kushner.” Last year, accusing Israel of “proudly doing a genocide”1 in Gaza, Uygur beseeched Carlson, Owens, and Greene to join forces with him and other progressives to “stop this.” He reached back in history to convey the gravity of the situation. “I would hope to god that if I was around in the 1930s and 1940s that I would have said, ‘Work with any right-wing populist and any left-wing populist or anyone period to stop that Holocaust,’ to save one more person,” he said, apparently unaware that it was the right-wing populists who were “doing” the Holocaust. In January, Uygur appeared on Carlson’s show, extending the hand of cooperation. “We’ve been taught by the media to hate each other and to have a tribal brain,” he said.

Carlson has also been gaining fans among Muslims, a proposition that would have shocked anyone who knew him personally or listened to his commentary over the past quarter century. “Democratic leadership has no idea how many people are being won over by Tucker Carlson and MTG right now over Israel,” the left-wing Substack writer Wajahat Ali tweeted, linking to a three-and-a-half-minute video in which the editor of the Economist tried unsuccessfully to get an answer out of Carlson on the question of whether Israel “has a right to exist.” Addressing speculation that Carlson might run for president, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid wrote, “If it was [Pennsylvania Governor Josh] Shapiro vs. Tucker, I could imagine a significant number of progressives, young people, Arabs, and Muslims sitting it out or actually voting for Tucker.”

Not surprisingly, Megyn Kelly is also jumping on to this trend: Bills to Pay? Four Months Ago vs. Today: Megyn Kelly’s Head-Spinning Shift on Radical Islam (Watch).

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE COUNTER-RECONQUISTA: Grateful Migrant Repays His Hosts in Barcelona “There’s the old excuse again: for years now, European authorities have classified what are clearly Islamic jihadis as mentally ill, which allows them to continue to pretend that there is no such thing as Islamic jihad and that the mass migration of Muslims into Europe poses no cultural or civilizational threat.”

Posted at 3:19 pm by Stephen Green

VIDEO: Hero Dad Drops a Persistent Carjacker Who Threatened His Family. “The “gentleman” in the peach shirt had already slammed a green sedan into two other vehicles nearby, then stumbled out like a man possessed. Not content with totaling ride #1, he launched a one-man crime spree, yanking door handles of other vehicles, trying to wrest doors open to steal a new set of wheels.”

Then he picked the entirely wrong car.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: The Odyssey — I Got A Bad Feeling About This One…

Certainly some interesting directorial choices being made by Christopher Nolan:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

BACK AND TO THE LEFT. BACK AND TO THE LEFT: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Isn’t Radical Enough for Graham Platner and the ‘New’ Democratic Party.

The Democrats are doubling down on crazy, and they show no sign of moderating their radical social and cultural agenda any time soon.

Last week, 78-year-old Maine Gov. Janet Mills bowed out of the primary contest for senator. Mills used traditional Democratic fundraising conduits to raise an impressive $5.4 million in two quarters. This isn’t a big haul for a large state, but it is pretty good for Maine.

Meanwhile, the infamous oyster farmer, Graham Platner, the man with the Nazi tattoo, raised $12.5 million. Mills woke up last week and realized there was no way she could compete with a juggernaut like that. Besides, Platner had awoken something in the usually staid and sensible Maine Democrats. He was leading by 30 points in some polls.

Sen. George Mitchell served three terms as a Democratic Senator from Maine. He was the Majority Leader of the Senate from 1989 to his retirement in 1995. Mitchell was the last elected Democrat to serve in the Senate (Angus King is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats).

Mitchell was a poster boy for Democratic Party moderates. He was a consummate Senate insider who put getting things done ahead of partisan bickering. His kind is gone now. They’ve been shoved aside by hysterical radicals whose grasping for power presages a dark period in U.S. political history.

How dark? This dark: Antisemitism Is The Litmus Test for Democrats in 2026.

Antisemitism is a mental disease, in the way that Trump Derangement Syndrome is.

Neither is based primarily on political or ideological affiliations, although each correlates highly with partisan affiliations and ideological commitments.

That correlation does have a causal relationship, but the opposite of what is generally assumed. The antisemitism comes first, then the ideology and the partisanship. First, the antisemitism, and only then the political decisions. That’s why you see the “right” coded antisemites flocking to the Democrats, as I wrote yesterday, and the Democrats gaining a “strange new respect” for former Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and right-coded Nick Fuentes.

That same sorting is happening with current and former Democrats, who are so appalled by the antisemitic outbreak in their party that they are flirting with becoming Republicans, or at least praising their clear-sightedness on this issue.

We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which former(?) self-admitted communist Van Jones is a voice of sanity:

Tweet continues, “It just shows you how nutty things have gotten that someone who wants to stick up for Israel and doesn’t want an open border now has to be a Republican.”

Finally, America’s Newspaper of Record is once again doing straight-up reportage:

(Though as Frank J. Fleming wryly noted, “Leftists: ‘If Graham Platner is a Nazi, then why does he hate Israel so much?’”)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAGA: The heartland’s revenge: how AI is reindustrializing the American interior.

America does not currently have the capacity to power these mega-projects, but the market is responding. Utilities are expanding existing plants, and a new generation of power stations is being planned, often funded directly by the “hyperscalers” themselves.

The materials for this build-out are coming from the “Rust Belt” and the South, regions once hollowed out by globalization. This reindustrialization is not accidental. Federal tax incentives, specifically domestic content requirements, have encouraged companies to source equipment from American manufacturers. But if policy is the carrot, our unique energy position is the engine.

By steering procurement toward domestic sources, federal policy has tapped into a decisive competitive advantage: our staggering abundance of natural gas. While much of the world faces shortages, the American interior is practically swimming in fuel. Because natural gas is often a byproduct of oil production, the shale revolution has created a massive surplus. Today, oil companies often flare this gas or pay to have it removed; now, new pipelines are being planned to transport it directly to the heavy industry hubs of the Heartland.

Here’s your takeaway: “For years, the goods economy relied on foreign products arriving at coastal hubs. But as the center of the country begins to export freight again, the gravity is shifting.”

Posted at 1:46 pm by Stephen Green

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY:

 

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D):

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE: Team Mamdani Kills Page Celebrating New York’s ‘Unique Ties to Israel’ and Large Jewish Community From Official City Website. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made no secret of his hostility to Israel, and it’s starting to bleed into New York City’s government.

Related:

More:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll