March 28, 2026

NO BOSSES:

Bruce Springsteen is the headliner at the flagship No Kings rally at the state Capitol in Saint Paul this afternoon. Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, and Bernie Sanders are also primed to appear. Truth in advertising would require the rally to be redesignated Gimme That Old Time Religion or In Search of Lost Time. As the Rolling Stones once trilled, “What a drag it is getting old.”

Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, and Ilhan Omar will also be there. They wouldn’t want to miss the chance to rag on the King. Opposing the King has become the lodestone of their careers. Contrary to the theme of the proceedings, it comes at no cost and places them at no risk. Abe Greenwald aptly observed in the Commentary newsletter: “Trump is such an oppressive emperor that Americans have felt completely secure in coming out to publicly protest him and his administrations more than they have any previous president. His suppression machine is clearly on the fritz.”

But not the left’s:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SO I GUESS THIS MEANS GRAHAM PLATNER ISN’T JUST A NAZI AND A COMMUNIST, BUT “PRO-RAPE.” “Holy f—, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”

In posts first reported by The Washington Post, Platner responded to a Reddit commenter who wrote, “There’s always that story about the girl who gets raped because she drank too much and somebody took advantage of that.”

Platner responded, “Holy f—, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to? Men and women, you make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a compromising situation, act like an adult for f—s sake.”

Everyone knows that only men are responsible for what happens when they are drunk. What’s funny is that Platner’s position would have been seen as common sense by everyone a few decades ago.

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

As “Miami” Steve Van Zandt told the London Times in 2024, “‘When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business.’ But some places feel like enemy territory now? ‘A little bit, yeah. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.’”

Not that Van Zandt is eager to mend fences with the Boss’s former base: Steven Van Zandt Is Bruce Springsteen’s Guitarist. He Hates You. He Wants You Dead.

Earlier from Sasha Stone: Springsteen Lashes Out After Biopic Flops.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Details about Scorsese’s 2007 production can be found at Wikipedia, and the full ten-minute clip with Scorsese’s dryly satiric setup and conclusion is at YouTube.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Moment defense secretary ’embarrassingly’ struggles to name navy fleet size.

The figure, which is down from previous published total of 23, was claimed to be inaccurate by defence analyst Francis Tusa.

LBC has contacted the Ministry of Defence for the official figure.
Speaking with Nick following Healey’s comments, Ms Tusa told LBC he was ‘flabbergasted’ by his response.

The government has faced criticism over its sluggish deployment of HMS Dragon to defend British troops stationed on Cyprus, after British bases were hit by Iranian drone strikes at the start of March.

This must be part of that “managed decline” that the Brits talk about so much:

Related: How the Royal Navy shrank to its smallest ‘since English Civil War.’

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WAS JUST SENT TO A REEDUCATION CAMP:

Posted at 10:55 am by Stephen Green

IT’S NOT EXACTLY THE VOIGHT-KAMPFF TEST, BUT IT’LL DO FOR NOW:

Tweet continues, “Holding three fingers right in front of the face adds occlusion (hand blocking face), lighting shifts, and depth blending, exposing artifacts like warped fingers, extra/missing digits, or pixel morphing. It’s a quick, reliable test for spotting fakes in real-time calls.”

At least for now. As Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor, “The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot.“

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll

OUT ON A LIMB:

Flashback: Brian Flores’ Lawsuit Exposes the Absurdity of NFL Racial Quotas Like the ‘Rooney Rule:’

Part of the reason this wisdom hasn’t been applied to the coaching world is due to absurd racial quota systems like the “Rooney Rule” in the NFL, which forces teams to interview at least one black candidate for any major coaching or executive vacancy.

The absurdity of this practice can be illustrated by simply applying it to NFL roster vacancies. Imagine if every NFL team were forced to invite a white cornerback into training camp every season. No NFL team has started a white cornerback since Jason Sehorn in 2002. A white cornerback who fulfilled a team’s obligation under a “Sehorn Rule” would feel insecure and teammates would feel resentful, even if the player was qualified for the position and seriously considered for the job.

This is not a defense of the NFL. The league brought this upon themselves when they jumped in bed with the social justice radicals after the Kaepernick saga and doubled down after the George Floyd/BLM riots. They deserve this lawsuit and everything that’s coming to them.

The rest of America would do well to abandon the obsession with racial optics and skin-deep assessments of our fellow countrymen, or we’re heading toward the all-out racial conflict that the radical left seems obsessed with fomenting.

By former New England Patriot Jake Bequette, Read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

SPITTING IMAGES: Back in 2007, Glenn wrote about the left’s efforts to memory hole their predecessors’ spitting on American soldiers after they returned home to America from Vietnam in the late ’60s and early 1970s: Jason Van Steenwyk looks at efforts to erase history.

UPDATE: In the comments, a reference to Bob Greene’s The Homecoming, which is described this way by Library Journal:

“Were you ever spat upon when you returned home to the United States?” asked syndicated columnist Greene of the Vietnam veterans among his readership. He received over 1000 letters in reply, many recounting specific details of just such a painfully remembered incident. Evidently this recollection of “hippies” (as they are often called in the letters) spitting on combat veterans has become one of the war’s most unpleasant, enduring images.

This would seem to pose problems for the new crowd of spitting-denialists, though they will no doubt manage to maintain their unbelief.

Today’s leftists melting down upon seeing ICE agents in airports also poses problems for the spitting denialists, if there are any still left: ICE Agents at This Airport Had the Perfect Reaction to Lefty Screeching About ‘Fascist Foot Soldiers.’

One leftist was so angry at seeing ICE at the baggage carousel that he (checks notes) smashed his own sunglasses and iPhone in response:

As for the rest of us:

UPDATE:

MORE: Regarding that last video, Bonchie of RedState tweets, “I remember in Nazi Germany when people could just walk up to ‘foot soldiers of the fascist regime’ and harass them, and they just laughed and kept walking.”

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll

PEOPLE ARE HARD TO PLEASE, AND THE INFLUENCER CROWD LIVES TO COMPLAIN, AND LIVES BY COMPLAINING:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE:

Posted at 8:27 am by Stephen Green

THE CORBYNIZATION OF LEFTIST BRITISH POLITICS CONTINUES APACE: Green activists called Jews ‘abominations’ in leaked WhatsApp chat.

Green Party activists described Jewish people as “an abomination to this planet” in anti-Semitic WhatsApp messages, The Telegraph can reveal.

One member of the Greens for Palestine group, a Left-wing faction in the Green Party, said Jews “murder, bomb and starve” children.

Another claimed the arson attack on four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in Golders Green, north London, on Monday had been a “false flag” operation, suggesting it could have been carried out by Jewish people.

A Green council candidate shared posts on social media, making the same claim.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said its lawyers were investigating the activists’ remarks. It said views expressed in the Greens for Palestine group chat were “straight out of Nazi Germany”.

Labour urged Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, to take action against those involved, saying the growing evidence of anti-Semitism within the party was “deeply troubling”. The Conservatives said the language was “utterly appalling”.

Meanwhile in the Colonies: Rise of the leftist groypers.

Last month, Ana Kasparian, executive producer of the progressive YouTube channel The Young Turks (6.5 million subs), tweeted out “Hey, bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it.” Ana, like many other chronically online leftists, has been making increasingly obsessive anti-Israel content since October 7. So obsessive, in fact, that it led Jillian Michaels, a co-host of Ana’s panel show Her Take, to storm off set in the middle of production saying “I don’t know how every show ends up being about ‘how do we bash Israel?’ This is not for me, I am not interested in this.”

“MAGA communist” influencer Jackson Hinkle likes to use the same phrase as Kasparian with his millions of followers. Examples include, “Goyim, do not complain. You must die for Israel,” “Now goyim, it’s time to die for Israel,” and “Goyim, don’t ask questions.” This is copied in even harsher languages by the “American Communist party,” a political formation that seems to be less a real party than a social media grift.

There are multiple factors driving the groyperfication of the online left. But it can’t be denied that there is increasing acceptance of anti-Semitic tropes by a subset of leftists and influencers. Nick Fuentes and his digital army of fans, “the Groypers,” have revamped anti-Semitic tropes for the digital era. Now, online leftists are using that same rhetoric.

Of course, left-wing anti-Semitism goes back decades: Stalin carried out Jewish purges and Brezhnev had vast quantities of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion printed in Arabic and distributed throughout the region to counter Israel.

And then there was that ideology that attempted to spread socialism nationally, and in a surprisingly environmentally-friendly way: Rupert Darwall on the Alarming Roots of Environmentalism.

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

TIME TO BUILD SOME NEW FIREBOATS:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

THEY SHOULD ALL BE DEAD:

Posted at 7:37 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE IVY EXILE: The Decline and Fall of the Information State (For Now).

In the waning weeks of his administration, Obama conspired with senior Democrats to kneecap the Trump administration before it even entered office, and Obama personally ordered a bogus intelligence community assessment to advance the false narrative that Trump was working for the Russians. That it wasn’t true didn’t mean that control of both the social and legacy media echo chambers couldn’t generate enough hype to make it feel true to many millions for many years. “Russiagate was not a tragedy but a crime against the country,” Siegel writes. “Disinformation was both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up, a weapon that doubled as a disguise … By conflating the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by foreign enemies, it justified turning tools of war against American citizens.”

And yet that effrontery sowed the seeds of the regime’s downfall. Supercharging paranoia and undermining Americans’ shared sense of reality ultimately only undermined elite technocrats’ credibility and legitimacy. The dirty tricks only ensured the populists’ return. Trump wasted no time smashing the centralized information apparatus when he returned to office, but the technological capacity for control advances day by day, along with the temptation to use it. Siegel leaves readers with a warning: “From the rubble of the old information state, the outline of a new one takes shape.”

Well, good.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

WATCHING THE VEGAN SAUSAGE GET MADE: Public Health Officials Lied, Hypocrisy Ruled, Trust Died: Brutal X Thread Conor Friedersdorf Walked Into.

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer for The Atlantic. He’s very perplexed and came to X in hope of some answers. He got them although it is probably not what he expected.

* * * * * * * *

Flashback: At the Apex of the Pivot.

Evergreen:

 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY:

Posted at 7:06 am by Glenn Reynolds