February 24, 2026

February 23, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CARTEL SHOOTS UP PUERTO VALLARTA; WOMEN, CHILDREN, 2SLGBTQIA+ CANADIANS HARDEST HIT: Member of Parliament Especially Concerned for 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadians in Puerto Vallarta.

As our own Just Mindy reported on Sunday, Puerto Vallarta, a popular tourist destination, exploded into chaos after Mexican forces killed the country’s most powerful drug kingpin, El Mencho. Flights to Puerto Vallarta were canceled, and the Toronto Star reported that Canadian tourists were being ordered to shelter in place amid the violent unrest.

Canadian Member of Parliament Heather McPherson of the New Democratic Party expressed special concern for members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. (For those who don’t know, the 2S stands for two-spirited, and because it represents indigenous transgender people, the 2S got pushed to the front of the line.)

Flashback to 2022, when the Gay Pride flag looked like images Keir Dullea would see while hurtling through the stargate in 2001: A Space Odyssey: Microsoft just dropped the latest Pride flag design, and yes, IT’S REAL 🤣

I have no words.

This flag combines 40 different flags from LGBTQIA+ communities around the world, including: Abrosexual, Aceflux, Agender, Ambiamorous, Androgynous, Aroace, Aroflux, Aromantic, Asexual, Bigender, Bisexual, Demifluid, Demigender, Demigirl, Demiromantic, Demisexual, Gay/MLM/Vinician, Genderfluid, Genderflux, Genderqueer, Gender questioning, Graysexual, Intersex, Lesbian, Maverique, Neutrois, Nonbinary, Omnisexual, Pangender, Pansexual, Polyamorous, Polysexual, Transgender, Trigender, Two Spirit, Progress Pride, Queer, Unlabeled.

The woke cultists just keep on going to new levels of madness!

In accordance with the prophecy:

Exit question: Does the London Daily Mail consider the 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadians to be a contingent of the “spoiled tourists” trapped there?

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE ATLANTIC’S GOT A FEVAH, AND IT NEEDS MORE NAZISM!

Previous Nazis detected by the Bletchley Park decoders at the Atlantic include that raving National Socialist, Mitt Romney, with a June 2012 headline, “Romney’s Odd Reference to Hitler:”

I used to think Romney’s klutziness was overstated. His much-ridiculed musing about how the trees in Michigan are “the right height”–struck me as a kind of earthily poetic way of saying that home always feels like home. But then three weeks ago BuzzFeed dug up a clip of Romney answering a question about energy policy and managing to drag Hitler in from left field:

The YouTube clip is now private, but it’s like a reference to this Romney quote from the 2008 campaign, which Time magazine spotted under the headline, “Romney’s Reich Turn:”

“Liquefied coal, gosh. Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there.”

—Romney, ruminating on Hitler’s scientific achievements unprompted, in a Q & A about energy policy. As the New York Sun’s Ryan Sager said at the time, you wouldn’t think that anyone running for president would have to be told, “Don’t mention Hitler in a positive light.”

Of course, the winner of the 2008 GOP primaries was John McCain. After the election was over, a CNN host looked at footage from the GOP convention in Minneapolis that year and pretended he was watching a Nuremberg rally: CNN Host D. L. Hughley: Republicans ‘Literally Look Like Nazi Germany.’

CNN host D.L. Hughley turned to the standard left-wing tactic of playing the Nazi card against Republicans on his program on Saturday evening: “The tenets of the Republican Party are amazing and they seem warm and welcome. But when I watch it be applied — like you didn’t have to go much further than the Republican National Convention….It literally look[s] like Nazi Germany.” He went on to say that blacks weren’t welcome in the party: “It just does not seem — like not only are we not welcome — not only are we not welcome, but they don’t even care what we think.” He later described the GOP as “reactionary.”

* * * * * * * *

Steele responded to this by correcting Hughley’s timeline, at least as it related to himself: “There was a Michael Steele before there was a Barack Obama. I mean, the reality of it is, I had established — I was the only black lieutenant governor in the country at the time. I was the only statewide black elected official when I was lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. And then Obama got elected in 2005. And so that wasn’t about, you know, oh, geez, let’s do this because of Obama.”

This isn’t the first time Hughley has expressed his disdain for Republicans on cable TV. In March 2006, the comic went on an obscenity-laced tirade against President George W. Bush on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher: “If I hear one more person tell me how this man is a man of faith, I think I’ll lose my mother-f***ing mind….When thousands and thousands of people were being, dying in New Orleans, this son of a bitch didn’t do sh*t, and that’s very un-Christlike to me.”

Flash-forward to CNN in April of 2023: Donna Brazile: Bush came through on Katrina.

And speaking of Bush, along with his VP, the late Dick Cheney, this was the left while they were in office for most of the first decade of 21st century:

These two were so Hitler-y and dastardly and despicable and the very font of evilness that Kamala Harris’s staffers fought tooth and nail for them to endorse their boss in 2024 — and won an endorsement from Cheney, despite Joe Biden being quoted by Reuters in 2008 that “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”

In 2007 at the late lamented Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery wrote:

As Jonah Goldberg noted this winter when Gerald Ford died, lauded by a media that had little good to say of him while he was president, each Republican president is a fool, a bigot, and a dangerous warmonger while he is in office, responsible for sexism, racism, ageism, and general misery. Once dead, however, he acquires a Strange New Respect. In time, the jibes thrown at him are airbrushed away, and he is seen as a statesman, a true conservative, with all the best values, all the more so when compared with whatever Republican is now in office, who is seen in comparison as someone who really is dangerous, a warmonger, bigot, and fool. In their turn, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush the Elder have become harmless and loveable figures, cherished for their good humor, their prudence, and tolerance–and for their distance from today’s modern conservatives, who have run their cause into the ground.

This pattern will not alter: In a few years, when President Rudy or Commander in Chief Thompson begins knocking heads, watch out for the press to express its Strange New Respect for Bush 43, whose government was nothing if not diverse as regards race and gender, and who at least made a pretense of being compassionate. In 2027, if Time is still around, will it run a cover, showing him shedding a tear?

Whatever is left of old media after 2028, their rehabilitation of Donald Trump will be both predictable and astonishing to watch.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

ON THE LEFT, THE WILL TO POWER DERIVES FROM VICTIMHOOD, especially for Gavin Newsom:

Tweet continues:

He desperately needed to surface some “oppressed” intersectional identity.

He’s going with “disabled” and will start “calling out” his opponents for “abelism” now.

The only other option he had was some “trans” identity like “nonbinary.” But he knows he couldn’t pull that off, and gender ideology is increasingly cringe and politically unpopular. Although I wouldn’t totally write off the possibility of him flirting with this.

His best bet was “disabled.” You could tell he was itching to bring it up, as his recent call-out was a serious stretch. The last time he mentioned it on X was 10 years ago.

Expect to see him bring it up more and more during his presidential campaign.

Along with his party’s operatives with Chyrons:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

PBS NEWS: Why New Deal-era art is disappearing from U.S. Post Offices (Video).

In 2017, when there was a flashback to “FDR Appoint[ing] KKK Member to U.S. Supreme Court. Hugo Black Came From The Klu Klux Klan Wing of the Democrat Party,” we asked, “Hey, When Do the FDR Statues Come Down? Should We Take Him Off the Dime? Rename the Island?” Until then, removing the artwork commissioned by his poisonous administration, which some saw as having fascist-adjacent language and imagery, and more than a twinge of antisemitism, seems like a good first step.

In 2022, NPR didn’t seem to lose too much sleep when artwork honoring FDR’s brother was memory holed: Theodore Roosevelt statue removed from American Museum of Natural History.

Why are they shocked over this?

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

DON’T WORRY, COLORADO DEMOCRATS ARE WORKING ON IT:

Posted at 8:15 pm by Stephen Green

DATA REPUBLICAN THREAD:

More: “IRGC mouthpieces calling protesters Mossad agents is expected. What gets that narrative into Western discourse is a different layer: outlets that look like independent journalism but have documented financial ties to Iranian and Russian state media.”

Do read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:32 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S A LOT TO UNPACK IN JUST THREE TWEETS:

I wonder why Axios or Politico or WaPo don’t seem to have asked similar questions*.

*I don’t actually wonder that.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Stephen Green