February 9, 2026

MIDDLE EAST: Uncle Sam Assembles Big Stick For Iran. “The U.S. military has some of the biggest sticks in the world, and right now a lot of them are Voltroning together within striking distance of Iran.”

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

CULTURE ISN’T JUST SOMETHING YOU CONSUME, IT’S SOMETHING YOU MAKE:

To be fair, vastly more people had heard of Kid Rock prior to the Super Bowl than had heard of Bad Bunny: HALFTIME S***SHOW: Even NFL Players Have No Idea Who Bad Bunny Is (Just Like the Rest of Us).

Posted at 3:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MAJA: Japan’s Iron Lady Took a Risk — and Won Big. “Takaichi is also eager to align with other nations that have conservatives in leadership. You could almost say that her slogan is 日本を再び偉大にする — “Make Japan Great Again.” What makes Sanae Takaichi interesting isn’t any slogan, though; it’s the snap election gamble she took and how decisively it paid off.”

Posted at 3:17 pm by Stephen Green

LOVIN’ IT: McDonald’s Sales Jump 2.4% After They Revived This Old School Strategy.

With its consumer sentiment on the decline (and a U.S. sales dip of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024), the fast-food giant refocused its efforts on offering more choices at affordable prices.

In January, McDonald’s launched McValue, a new menu and platform that offers popular $5 Meal Deals along with exclusive and local discounts, as well as a “Buy One, Add One for $1” offering, available all day.

“When it comes to value, we know there’s no one-size-fits-all,” Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said in a press release. “We’ve worked closely with our franchisees to create a new platform that will let our customers define value on their own terms.”

It never ceases to amaze me that even large corporations forget that what their customers value most is… value.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

“THIS IS NOT WHERE I WAS ANTICIPATING GETTING STUCK.”

Posted at 1:56 pm by Stephen Green

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, NOT THE ACTIVISTS:

Posted at 1:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE GOODBYE LOOK: Cuba warns airlines they can’t refuel amid Trump tariff threat.

The communist government warned international airlines they can no longer refuel at its main airport in Havana for the next month after Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any nation that supplies Cuba with oil. A-1 jet fuel won’t be available at Jose Marti International Airport beginning Tuesday through March 11, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a notice Sunday.

The fuel supply situation on Cuba is critical, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to news agency Interfax. However, he didn’t specify whether Moscow is planning to provide oil products to the island.

Russia’s largest airline, Aeroflot, cancelled its Monday commercial flight to Cuba and instead sent the empty plane to pick up stranded tourists, Russia’s tour operators association said in a statement. Aeroflot flights to Cuba have been suspended until late March, it added. The group estimates there are about 4,500 Russians vacationing on the island at present.

Nicaragua, meanwhile, altered its immigration rules to block Cuban citizens from entering the Central American country without a visa. Nearly one in five Cuban residents has fled the island over the past decade amid a worsening economic crisis.

With Moscow’s attention more or less fully committed to Ukraine, there’s never been a better time to put the screws to Cuba’s commies.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

What horrible people.

Related:

Rotten children with violent streaks.

Posted at 1:26 pm by Stephen Green

JOHN HAWKINS: So Much of Liberalism Really is Them Pretending Not to Understand Things.

So, this has been floating around on X, and it has gotten a lot of traction because it’s so true:

Talking to liberals about political issues is nearly impossible, not just because they think disagreeing with them makes you de facto evil, but because they’re constantly feigning stupidity about so many things. Don’t get me wrong; liberals often truly believe completely ridiculous things, but they also frequently pretend not to understand the most basic concepts.

* * * * * * * * *

How bad is it? Well, Matt Walsh rather famously made AN ENTIRE MOVIE about the inability of liberals to define a woman, something pretty much everyone from cavemen on has been able to handle without a lot of trouble:

Try explaining your problem with the idea of manmade global warming, socialism, or the dangers of refusing to secure the border, and they just don’t get it. Somehow, they claim that they can’t understand what you mean.

How do you have a dialogue with people who behave like this? You don’t, which is exactly how they like it.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

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.

Posted at 12:17 pm by Helen Smith

ICYMI:

Posted at 12:08 pm by Glenn Reynolds