April 10, 2026

KEIR STARMER’S REGIME WOULD BE A CLOWN SHOW IF IT WEREN’T FOR ALL THE RAPES AND STABBINGS:

UPDATE (From Ed): Metaphor alert:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GOD AND MAN AT THE OBAMA LIBRARY:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

TODAY TRUMP SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS*: Trump goes off on ‘NUT JOBS’  Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Alex Jones over Iran war criticism.

President Trump lashed out at four right-wing critics of the Iran war Thursday, describing them as “NUT JOBS” and “losers” who will say anything for attention.

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post.

“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” the president raged. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!

“They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them, they’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.”

* Rather than a Godfather callback, maybe I should have gone with a Return of the Jedi reference:

UPDATE:

To boldly go where Bill Kristol went during Trump’s first term:

Related: Megyn Kelly is imagining Mark Levin as Luca Brasi:

Posted at 1:05 pm by Ed Driscoll

I BELIEVE IT:

UPDATE: Hell, it feels better than our grandparents felt waiting in gasoline lines.

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM THE TIME CAPSULE:

In his 1980 book The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler wrote:

No one today, from the experts in the White House or the Kremlin to the proverbial man in the street, can be sure how the new world system will shake out—what new kinds of institutions will arise to provide regional or global order. But it is possible to dispel several popular myths.

The first of these is the myth propagated by such films as Rollerball and Network, in which a steely-eyed villain announces that the world is, or will be, divided up and run by a group of transnational corporations. In its most common form this myth pictures a single worldwide Energy Corporation, a single Food Corporation, a single Housing Corporation, a single Recreation Corporation, and so forth. In a variant, each of these is seen as a department of an even larger mega-corporation.

This simplistic image is based on straight-line extrapolations from Second Wave trends: specialization, maximization, and centralization.

Not only does this view fail to take into account the fantastic diversity of of real life conditions, the clash of cultures, religions, and traditions in the world, the speed of change, and the historic thrust now carrying the high-technology nations toward de-massification; not only does it naively presuppose that such needs as energy, housing, or food can be neatly compartmentalized; it ignores the fundamental changes now revolutionizing the structure and purpose of the corporation itself. It is based, in short, on an obsolete, Second Wave image of what a corporation is and how it is structured.

On April 1st, 1976, Congress rolled up seven bankrupt Northeast Corridor railroads into Conrail, a 17,000-route mile behemoth that was eventually privatized 11 years later. Also on April 1st, 1976, two college dropouts formed Apple Computer in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage, and unleashed the personal computing revolution.

As I wrote on Tuesday, Paddy Chafesky’s 1976 film Network is a brilliant movie, but it’s a time capsule of an era of mass media that was already in its twilight upon the film’s release.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION DIRECTOR EXITS THE CLOSEST THING TO A FREE-SPEECH PLATFORM ON THE INTERNET:

Meet the new boss, not at all like the old boss.

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

THE DONROE DOCTRINE: Tracking China in the Americas: Adiós, Amigos.

A few years ago, I was on a road trip in Costa Rica with a friend who lives there — we were driving across the country from Tamarindo to Puerto Viejo — and we stopped at a gas station to get some drinks. He came out and handed me my Gatorade Zero and said, “Are there a lot Chinese businesses in Atlanta?”

It wasn’t something I’d thought much about, so I told him I wasn’t sure, and he told me they were popping up all over Costa Rica at rapid speed. He said something like, “I don’t know how they do it. It all just falls into place. It’s like they sold their souls to the devil. Everything works out for them.”

Later, he asked me what I thought of Chinese car brands. I told him we didn’t really have that in the United States, and he told me they were flooding the Costa Rican market, and the cars were awful. “Give me a Ford over a Chinese car any day,” he said.

Up until that point, I had no idea just how much China had infiltrated Costa Rica and/or Latin America, but after that I started learning. It was ugly. It’s what prompted this “Tracking China in the Americas” series that I began writing last fall.

But here’s the good news: The tides are turning in many places.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:15 pm by Stephen Green

M-SNOW’S STEPHANIE RUHLE PRAISES IRAN’S MORAL COURAGE:

My first reaction was, “No, you don’t have to hand it to them.” What the Iranians of whom she speaks are “sacrificing” for is pure evil. While it is true that self-sacrifice is a key component of any moral system, and the pursuit of pure pleasure is morally degenerate, the “what” of that which one is willing to sacrifice matters as much or more than the mere fact of being willing to die for a cause.

Suicide bombers die for a cause. Do I have to “hand it to them?” Parents who put their children in harm’s way to make them martyrs are sacrificing. That is morally abhorrent.

Walter Sobchak could not be reached for comment:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

THAT SEEMS BOTH WISE AND OBVIOUS: Don’t ask students to ‘discover’ math before they’ve learned fundamentals. “‘In many classrooms, students are encouraged to ‘discover’ math principles, come up with multiple problem-solving strategies and explore patterns before they’ve mastered core procedures, such as 6 x 8 = 48, she writes. ‘he intention is deeper understanding. But teachers frequently report student frustration, uneven mastery, and widening gaps between those who enter with strong background knowledge and those who do not.'”

So many of today’s teaching fads leave the weaker students even further behind that you have to wonder if that’s the intent.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green

OUCH: USPS suspends contributions to employee pensions after warning of ‘cash crisis.’

The USPS contributes about $400 million a month to its employee pension plan, the agency said in a statement on Thursday. The postal service said it will continue to send worker contributions to the retirement plan and will also transmit employer automatic and matching contributions, as well as employee contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan, another retirement program for federal workers.

The temporary halt in contributions to the USPS program comes after Postmaster General David Steiner warned Congress last month that the postal agency is heading for a financial crisis without a course correction. Those changes could include raising the cost of a first-class stamp to 95 cents or reducing delivery from its current six days per week schedule to five or fewer, he said.

Without such changes, Steiner said, the USPS could run out of cash within 12 months, which could result in a stoppage of mail delivery.

There’s FedEx for important mail, UPS for packages, and USPS for junk, mostly.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

JIM TREACHER: We Need to Talk About the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ Community.

It’s Thursday, April 9, 2026. I’m allegedly Jim Treacher. And I just learned a new acronym. You just heard it.

Okay, let me try this: MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.

That stands for: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and additional identities.

Again, that’s MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. I find it helps to go three letters at a time. Like when you’re giving your account number to the customer service guy, who says his name is Steve but he has an Indian accent.

The speaker there is named Leah Gazan. (Oops. There’s a warning sign right there.) Who is a member of Canadian Parliament. She’s in the NDP, whatever that is. No offense, Canada, but you don’t matter.

I can’t wait to see what the updated Gay Pride flag looks like in 2026. I’m sure it’s moved far beyond the stripped-down minimalism of its 2022 design:

I think that’s the interstellar wake the USS Enterprise produces, just after the warp drive has engaged.

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

“IF YOU HAD SHOWN THIS OUTCOME TO EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE BUSH, THEY ALL WOULD’VE GIVEN THE ORDER:”

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll

THEY’RE NOT EVEN PRETENDING THAT IT’S ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN SQUASHING POLITICAL OPPOSITION:

Actually, they haven’t pretended for a while. I mean at first I thought this was satire but there’s no sign of it.

Posted at 10:08 am by Glenn Reynolds