KURT SCHLICHTER: Men Are Going to Strike Back:

It’s no surprise to anybody who is paying attention that the complex system that governed the relationship of men and women throughout the ages has been disrupted in the last 50 years. Two Helens have recently made a splash talking about this. Helen Andrews gave a powerful speech at last year’s Nat Con that got a lot of attention about the feminization of culture. More recently, Helen Smith, a.k.a. Mrs. @Instapundit, just published her important new book His Side, which commits the revolutionary act of asking men what they think about the current war on the unfair sex. We people with penises are not supposed to talk about any of this stuff. We’re not supposed to talk about how society has changed, for the worse, by the domination of feminine values over our institutions, institutions that were built to greatness through masculine values.

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Vermont EV buses prove unreliable for transportation this winter.

Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont’s Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can’t be charged in a garage.

Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: “Taxpayers were sold an $8 million ‘solution’ that can’t operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England.”

“We’re beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud,” Behrens said.

“When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside,” Behrens said. “Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored.”

General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that “the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given.”

Why should a local transit manager care about success when there’s government money to be had?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems’ Election Fraud Fetish Will Be What Ends America. “Because a collectivist brain rot affects the Democratic hive mind, they want everyone to partake in that misery. While I am having a good time here on the Trump 47 MAGA train, I am ever aware that we’re just one presidential election loss away from the Republic being brought to the cliff edge of oblivion. Look at how much damage the desiccated husk of Joe Biden and his commie puppet masters were able to do in just four short years. If the Dems get another two term president any time soon, we’ll all be speaking Mandarin and forced to watch those crappy movies that Barack Obama makes for Netflix.”

#JOURNALISM:

I MEAN, COME ON, HE’S NO DADDY YANKEE:

DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM THE CIA:

Or The Guardian.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: ‘We’re Not Criminalizing the Unhoused’: How a Homeless Encampment and Drug Dealers Are Destroying a Local Condominium Complex and Turning Its Residents’ Lives Upside Down.

From Prince George’s County, “which has the highest Democratic vote-share of any county in the United States, at 86 percent.”

“The dilapidation of this community was caused directly by the county,” said Phil Dawit, Quasar’s managing director. “The reason it’s so bad now is that everyone let it fester.”

This report is based on emails from county officials, interviews with residents of the Marylander, invoice records and maintenance logs, and dozens of hours of video footage, much of it from the body cameras that Quasar executives wore when they visited the condo.

It reveals a Kafkaesque battle between law-abiding citizens and the left-wing bureaucrats who abandoned them, as officials in a deep blue county vowed to be “compassionate” and avoid “criminalizing the unhoused.”

The costs of that compassion fell predominantly on poor, non-white condo-owners who saw the value of their homes evaporate as vandalism from the encampment pushed the complex into disrepair. That in turn made banks unwilling to finance security upgrades—without which the condo was more susceptible to crime—and caused inspectors to deem many units “unfit for human habitation” after the heating system was vandalized.

The county is now taking the condo to court to enforce an evacuation order against those units. If a judge rules in the county’s favor on Thursday, the residents who for years were terrorized by a homeless encampment will become homeless themselves.

“The people working hard and following laws are on their way to being homeless,” Dawit said. “Meanwhile, the homeless encampment gets to do whatever it wants.”

Read the whole thing.

SHOT:

CHASER:

In 2026, we are beginning to develop consequences for the left. They’re shocked at this genuinely unprecedented development.

BIG SHIFT:

I’ve always felt that the Moon made more sense because it’s closer, but going directly to Mars is doable, as Bob Zubrin demonstrated with his Mars Direct architecture back in the 1990s. But I think Elon has now decided that he can’t leave his rear area open to occupation by hostile forces.

#JOURNALISM:

OUTKICK THE COVERAGE: Super Bowl LX Was Forgettable And If Casual Fans Boycotted They Didn’t Miss Much. “If you boycotted the Super Bowl, you’re not alone. The New England Patriots offense also did for most of Sunday night. The Seattle Seahawks are the Super Bowl LX champions and reign over the entire NFL because they overmatched Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and the Patriots offense in a 29-13 blowout. The truth is this game had only a couple of moments when it was in doubt.”

JOSH BLACKMAN: Seven Pages Of Nixon Grand Jury Testimony Reveal The Real Threat Of the Deep State. Nixon’s enemies within his own administration were spying on and trying to subvert the elected President. “The biggest takeaway is that an Air Force officer, Yeoman Radford, who worked in the White House, was a mole. No, not for the Soviets, but for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He would routinely make copies of documents from Nixon administration officials and share them with people in the Pentagon. Radford would pilfer documents from Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig and make copies of them. . . . The purpose of this espionage was to check the incumbent president from taking actions that the deep state opposed. You have to read through a lot of background to get to this shocking takeaway. Here is the key excerpt, where Nixon reveals to the prosecutors about the deep state ‘can of worms’. . . . Do you see what happened? Nixon was fully aware that there was a deep state in his own administration. He employed the ‘Plumbers’ to plug those leaks. But he would only reveal the depth of the deep state before a secret grand jury investigation. The Watergate Prosecutors, who were part of the DOJ deep state, did not want Nixon to talk about the Pentagon deep state. And for five decades, this testimony was sealed, until Rosen reported on it.”

ICYMI:

ROBERT SPENCER: Mamdani Has a Terrific Idea for How the U.S. Should Handle the Immigration Issue. “Hizzoner started out, however, by magnanimously invoking the wisdom of a different religion, in an apparent effort to throw his critics off the scent and dispel growing suspicions that he is a far more hardline Muslim than he ever gave any hint of being during his campaign.”

WELL, BYE:

Related:

WHADDYA MEAN NOT TONE POLICING THE RIGHT? THAT’S CRAZY TALK.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY:

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: With Purge, Xi’s Military Control Rises—and so Do the Region’s Risks.

The investigation of the officers, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, marks one of the most consequential political military purges in China’s armed forces in decades. Zhang, a Politburo member and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu, chief of staff of the commission’s Joint Staff Department, sat at the apex of China’s military system. Their sudden removal for alleged disciplinary and legal violations has hollowed out the military’s most important governing body and no doubt shaken the armed forces’ senior leadership.

The immediate effect is stark. The seven-member Central Military Commission has been effectively reduced to just two figures—Xi Jinping himself and political commissar Zhang Shengmin.

Zhang Youxia’s downfall is particularly striking. Long viewed as untouchable, he was a red aristocrat with revolutionary pedigree, deep personal ties to Xi, and rare combat experience. He was among the oldest senior commanders to have fought in China’s 1979 war with Vietnam. Unlike much of today’s Chinese military leadership, whose experience is shaped overwhelmingly by exercises, simulations and political work, Zhang had seen the realities of combat. He was widely regarded by observers as one of the few generals who was likely capable of telling Xi what he needed to hear, not simply what the party leader wanted to hear.

With this move, Xi has reinforced a central truth of Chinese civil-military relations: the military is not a national army; it is the armed wing of the Communist Party and ultimately an instrument of Xi’s personal authority. The purge confirms that no pedigree, no combat record and no past loyalty confer immunity when control is at stake.

Exit quote: “A military preoccupied with internal discipline campaigns, loyalty checks and political rectification is unlikely to press aggressively for major external operations. Over time, however, the risks begin to accumulate.”

Stay tuned…