August 3, 2026

#RESIST: NYC to unveil new Columbus statue as group sidesteps Mamdani’s middle finger.

A new nonprofit is planning to unveil a Christopher Columbus statue in Brooklyn this October — dodging Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other haters who’d rather cancel the Italian-born explorer.

The Preserving Italian Heritage Coalition, brought together by Chinese-American state Assemblyman Lester Chang (R-Brooklyn), is planning to house the statue at the John Hughes Club in Dyker Heights, private property that keeps it out of the clutches of city officials.

“I’m Chinese, but this is my community, too,” said Chang, who was born on Eldridge Street in Manhattan and today represents Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights. The coalition is now looking to raise $100,000 to cover construction and maintenance costs.

Chang traces the idea to last November’s election and to President Trump’s Columbus Day proclamation weeks earlier, which vowed to reclaim the explorer from “left-wing arsonists.” He wrote the committee’s first check himself, before there was a bank account to put it in.

Now that’s what I call assimilation.

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

WELL, BYE: Carville rips Piker: ‘If he becomes a force in the Democratic Party, I’m out of here.’

“To talk about the larger Democratic Party, post the election in Michigan going forward, I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker,” Carville said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing,” referring to the Michigan Senate race between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

“I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy. Now, I think that a majority –– overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me, but this idea that we’re going to seize the means of production and this –– just go look at the DSA platform,” he continued, referring to the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA).

Carville came to prominence more than three decades ago, representing a wing of the party that already got shoved aside by Obama’s red diaper cohort almost two decades ago.

And now the Obama wing isn’t far left enough for the up-and-coming DSA types.

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

ACADEMIA IS, IN FACT, TOTALLY BROKEN.

Posted at 9:17 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Iran War Continues to Be Whatever Anyone Wants It to Be. “Nobody who is sane wants wars to go on forever, but it’s patently absurd to think that we’re into another Vietnam because there hasn’t been a neat and clean resolution after five months. What’s really disturbing is that I heard some people who I know to be supporters of President Trump leaning this way.”

Posted at 9:05 am by Stephen Green

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Democratic discontent with Mamdani mounts in New York City’s outer boroughs.

When Queens Borough President Donovan Richards accused the Democratic Socialists of America of perpetuating “white supremacy” earlier this month, it marked a rare instance of a well-known local Democrat taking direct, withering aim at the group that propelled Mayor Zohran Mamdani into City Hall.

Since Mamdani’s ascension there, local elected Democrats have been hard pressed to publicly blast him and his hard-left base. The mayor’s approval ratings remain strong and the DSA has emerged as a serious political force in the city. So Richards’ X post — which was referencing the DSA’s majority white membership nationally — hinted at a potential turning point.

His attack also points to a more broadly felt symptom: Growing discontent with Mamdani from Democratic politicians in the city’s outer boroughs.

Days after Richards’ online lament, more anti-Mamdani sentiment erupted in the Bronx, where City Councilmember Oswald Feliz accused the mayor of giving his community “crumbs” by not pairing a bus lane project in his district with enough infrastructure upgrades in surrounding areas. Like Richards, Feliz made a reference to race, albeit a more subtle one.

“Is this community not trendy enough to justify the kind of improvements that other communities receive, even without asking?” Feliz said in a statement last week. “If this was a wealthier neighborhood, I have no doubt that a more ambitious proposal would have been on the table. Minority communities are important, and deserve better.”

Too white, doesn’t spend enough other people’s money — you gotta love it.

Posted at 8:34 am by Stephen Green

HUH. GO FIGURE.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE NASHVILLE BOOK SCENE GOES JUDENFREI: ‘White. Blonde. Jew’ author says store canceled event amid backlash. “Just two days after Nashville bookstore Bell Bird Books issued a statement defending its book launch with “White. Blonde. Jew.” author Alyssa Rosenheck, the event now appears to have been cancelled. Rosenheck said in a statement on July 31 that Bell Bird Books cancelled the event days earlier amid ongoing social media backlash and calls to boycott the store. Critics said the event was promoting Zionism, the belief that the Jewish people have the right to the creation and protection of a sovereign state in Israel.”

So what if it is? Zionism is good, and this is supposed to be America. You can bet that the “Republicans banned books” people are okay with this, too.

Posted at 8:12 am by Glenn Reynolds

ROBERT SPENCER: In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again. “What’s next? Maybe organized boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. The BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement announced a week after Mamdani took office that it welcomed Mamdani’s ‘revocation of the anti-BDS Executive Order issued last month by the previous mayor.’ The executive order that Mamdani revoked ‘prevented any mayoral agencies or appointees from doing business with vendors and organizations complying with international law by holding genocidal Israel accountable.’ That is, the city was prevented from doing business with entities that boycotted Israel, but no longer.”

Posted at 8:03 am by Stephen Green

JASON GUMP: Cambridge professor made impossible claim he was on Seven Up.

Now footage of a talk Prof [Jason] Arday gave in October 2022 has re-emerged, revealing his claim that he appeared as a child on Seven Up.

He told the University of Bath’s Race Equality Taskforce: “I was part of a programme, actually, which – it doesn’t really exist any more – but it was called Seven Up at the time.

“And Seven Up is basically when they follow you over the duration of your life, so they follow you at [ages] 7, 14, 21. I was pulled out of the project when I was 14.”

During the same talk, he also claimed: “I had just turned 18 when I learnt to read and write.”

Seven Up was the first episode in a decades-long TV series created by Granada Productions for ITV.

The series follows 14 people’s lives at seven-year intervals, beginning when they were seven years of age. The final instalment is expected to be broadcast later this year.

The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1964, meaning its subjects were born in 1957. Subsequent programmes have been titled 21 Up, 28 Up and so on as the participants have grown older.

The BBC also commissioned a spin-off series titled Up: Millennium Generation. This began in 2000, also featuring a group of seven-year-olds. At the time, Prof Arday would have been 15.

A BBC spokesman confirmed that Prof Arday was not involved with the Up: Millennium Generation films.

Like Forrest Gump, or his prototype, Woody Allen’s earlier Leonard Zelig character, Arday has made claims of being seemingly everywhere, apparently not considering that he’d eventually be caught, or that he’d be too entrenched in academia for anything to happen to him if he was. And he may be right — over to you, Cambridge: Cambridge Can — but Evidently Won’t — Catch Jason Arday.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

DECOUPLING: The True Cost of Decoupling from China.

The EY study tallies the costs of Western investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, and research and development at $23.6 trillion—a large headline number. But let’s add some context. Using simple assumptions of 2% U.S. GDP growth through 2050 and 1.5% GDP growth for Europe and the United Kingdom, total economic output from the West will reach more than $1.7 quadrillion in nominal dollars. In that case, $23.6 trillion turns out to be less than 1.5% of total GDP.

For further comparison, the U.S. will spend about 3% of its GDP on defense this year, while the European Union, where defense expenditures are rising, will spend more than 2%. If China remains America’s preeminent strategic competitor over the next several decades—a view that most U.S. foreign policy and elected officials share—spending about half of what we spend on defense in order to decouple from the Chinese Communist Party is not an unreasonable proposition.

Even that comparison is likely too generous. Most of what EY counts as the cost of decoupling is actually investment to produce goods needed to do so, such as mines, processing facilities, and electrical grid equipment. These investments would not only create resilience against China but would employ millions of our own people in construction and production.

Weighed against those potential costs, meanwhile, are the costs of not decoupling and instead maintaining today’s strategic dependencies.

Indeed.

Posted at 7:32 am by Stephen Green

REPRISALS WOULD BE A GOOD START:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

THE VIDEO IS OF A CIVILIAN WHO STOPPED A WOULD-BE MASS SHOOTER IN IDAHO THIS WEEKEND:

And the question is valid.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds