May 31, 2026

THE BURNT FOOL’S BANDAGED FINGER GOES WOBBLING BACK TO THE FIRE: Hochul just let Mamdani start to borrow NYC’s way back to the 1975 financial crisis. “Robbing the future to pay for the present nearly sank the city 50 years ago, and the math hasn’t changed. By insisting on ballooning the budget to $127 billion, refusing to make any real spending cuts and embracing this dodgy de-facto borrowing, Mamdani’s not leading New York City into some new golden socialist era.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

May 30, 2026

INSURRECTION!

This is much more violent than January 6. January 6 was American citizens acting like Americans. This is enemies of America acting like enemies.

Posted at 11:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds

FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND GERMANY — AND SPAIN — NEED REVOLUTIONS AT THIS POINT:

Plus:

Trying to set fire to a stone structure both illustrates the subnormal IQ of the protesters, and the problem that they present. The solutions to the problem are obvious, of course, which is why they are not being pursued.

And, from the open thread:

Posted at 10:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Keep rockin’!

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S JUST A BLITZKRIEG OF OPPOSITION DUMPS: Platner Maintained Sexually-Suggestive Profile on ‘Predator’s Paradise’ App Known For Child Exploitation.

Democrat candidate for Maine U.S. Senate Graham Platner has had a long history of sexual deviancy unearthed over the course of his political campaign. It’s previously been revealed that Platner has engaged in bouts of masturbation in public restrooms, had phone sex on a network compromised by the Taliban, and cried over the closure of a Thailand prostitution tax-loophole.

A recent report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that Platner has an account on an anonymous messaging platform known for playing host to countless sexual predators, Kik.

Platner’s account, which goes by the username phustle0331, remains active today. His chosen avatar is a mirror selfie where an individual appears to be dressed in nothing but a bath towel. The tattoos featured on the individual match tattoos that Platner had as recently as October when he conducted an interview with a local ABC affiliate, confirming that he is the individual pictured. Further, the username matches that of private Instagram account associated with Platner as well as his infamous Reddit account.

* * * * * * * *

Platner’s Kik account, which he later admitted was his to the Wall Street Journal, was created on June 26, 2016. By that time, Kik has already garnered a strong reputation as a platform rife with predators seeking to sexually exploit children. Several cases received widespread attention, including a 2016 sting operation that resulted in the arrests of more than 2,600 predators. The issue was considered so prevalent that the New York Times published an exposé on the dangers the app posed to children.

Meanwhile, when you’re a leftist who’s lost The Atlantic…: Atlantic Drops ‘Do Better Than Platner’ Bomb as Shipwreckedcrew Warns: DNC Prepping Another Primary Heist.

Obviously, The Atlantic would never publish anything without the express approval of the DNC, so it gives a peek at how the Democrat Party is feeling about adding Platner to their elected ranks. Clearly, they see it as very problematic.

Related:

 

Bob Torricelli, tanned, rested, and ready; as Michael Graham sagely cautioned in 2004 (the year Torricelli was swapped out and replaced by a fossilized Frank Lautenberg on the NJ ballot), “Don’t assume you know who’s on the Democratic ticket until Election Day.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

I WAS HOPING IT WAS PROOF OF ROMAN SETTLEMENT IN LOUISIANA, BUT IT’S JUST WAR BOOTY: Mysterious Stone in US Backyard Turns Out to Be an Archaeological Treasure. “The grave marker was among those later listed as missing. Its exact measurements, as recorded by the museum, matched those of the tablet found in Santoro and Lopez’s garden. Exactly how the stone traveled from wartime Italy to suburban Louisiana remained an equally fascinating saga. According to Erin Scott O’Brien, the Carrollton house’s former owner, the tablet had been on display in a cabinet containing other heirlooms in the Gentilly house of her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr., a soldier stationed in Italy during WWII.”

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHEN REALITY BITES: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) might want to reconsider her claim about the Rich not paying their “fair share” of federal taxes,

Posted at 7:08 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE NIGHT PORTER: Graham Platner’s Wife Flagged Sexually Explicit Texts to His Senate Campaign.

The previously unreported deliberations last year over sexually explicit texts discovered on Platner’s phone come as the veteran has exploded onto the national political scene, kindling Democratic hopes that they can unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins and gain control of the Senate.

Platner has recently faced disclosures about controversial posts from his now deleted Reddit account. They have included comments from his account downplaying sexual assault and crude posts about sex workers and masturbation. Platner has already admitted to having covered up a Nazi-linked tattoo.

The revelations about Platner’s past have provided fodder for Republicans and stirred debate within the Democratic Party about his character and judgment. Platner is a political novice. Some in the party fear they have attached themselves to a candidate who didn’t undergo thorough vetting and could undermine their hopes for the midterm elections in November.

Platner also has an active account on Kik, a popular, private messaging app. Platner’s profile shows a mirror selfie of him shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist. Many of his tattoos are clearly visible in the picture.

* * * * * * * *

Besides his posts on Reddit downplaying sexual assault, which became the subject of an attack ad by his then-primary opponent Janet Mills, Platner has also expressed lenient views related to infidelity in other posts. Mills, the Maine governor, suspended her campaign ahead of the June 9 Democratic primary.

Exit quote:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NITHYA RAMAN: BIKE LANE LEFTIST.

Back in 2003, Mark Steyn wrote:

Like Susan Lucci at the Emmys, Howard Dean is getting better at putting a brave face on things. When Saddam Hussein fell from power, the Vermonter said churlishly, “I suppose that’s a good thing.” When Uday and Qusay bit the dust, the governor announced that “the ends do not justify the means.” But on Sunday, Dr. Dean was doing his best to be fulsome, if you can be fulsome with clenched teeth. Nonetheless, he congratulated “our extraordinary military on an extraordinary victory and an extraordinary success.” They gave Miss Lucci the Emmy eventually, and maybe by Labor Day next year, when the good doctor is thanking Don Rumsfeld for the souvenir vial of Osama’s DNA he FedExed over, the voters will be feeling sorry enough to give Howard the prize, too. But this weekend that pileup of “extraordinaries” made the governor seem, well, ordinary.

It’s odd that when something big happens, as on Sunday, the Democratic candidates seem irrelevant to the story, like asking a lacrosse expert what he thinks of the Super Bowl. They get interviewed and they trot out their lame clichés, about the need to “internationalize” Iraq, by which they mean not Tony Blair, John Howard, the Poles and Italians, but Kofi Annan, The Hague, the French, the Guinean foreign minister, all the folks who proved unwilling and unable to deal with Iraq before the liberation and who have given no indication of being likely to do any better after. The Democrats’ indestructible retreat to this dreary line gives them the air of a gormless twit in a drawing-room comedy coming in through the French windows every 10 minutes and saying, “Anyone for tennis?” You can’t help feeling that, on the big questions roiling around America’s national security, the Dems don’t really have speaking parts: if this was Broadway, they’d have been written out in New Haven.

There was a revealing moment on MSNBC the other night. Chris Matthews asked Dr. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in an American court or at The Hague. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference,” said the governor airily. Mr. Matthews pressed once more. “It doesn’t make a lot of difference to me,” he said again. Some of us think what’s left of Osama is already hard enough to scrape off the cave floor and put in a matchbox, never mind fly to the Netherlands. But, just for the sake of argument, his bloodiest crime was committed on American soil; American courts, unlike the international ones, would have the option of the death penalty. But Gov. Dean couldn’t have been less interested. So how about Saddam? The Hague “suits me fine,” he said, the very model of ennui. Saddam? Osama? Whatever, dude.

So what does get the Dean juices going? A few days later, the governor was on CNN and Judy Woodruff asked him about his admission that he’d left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because “I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over the bike path.” I hasten to add that, in contrast to current Anglican controversies over gay marriage in British Columbia and gay bishops in New Hampshire, this does not appear to have been a gay bike path: its orientation was not an issue; it would seem to be a rare example of a non-gay controversy in the Anglican Communion. But nevertheless it provoked Howard into “a big fight.” “I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard in the citizens group,” he told Judy Woodruff. Fighting, fighting, fighting.

And that’s our pugnacious little Democrat. On Osama bin Laden, he’s Mister Insouciant. But he gets mad about bike paths. Destroy the World Trade Center and he’s languid and laconic and blasé. Obstruct plans to convert the ravaged site into a memorial bike path and he’ll hunt you down wherever you are.

It’s just a little bit of history repeating, as Shirley Bassey would say:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

CYNICAL PUBLIUS: Élan, Social Justice, and Losing Wars.

Military historians talk a lot about “revolutions in military affairs.” Usually, this refers to a game-changing technology that obliterates existing doctrines and tactics almost overnight. Examples include the phalanx, the longbow, the rifled musket, targeted indirect fires, the machine gun, the airplane, the submarine, the tank, the nuclear bomb, and the drone—the list goes on and on. However, revolutions in military affairs often do not relate directly to technology. Instead, they are frequently rooted in changes in guiding philosophies born of the “moral” (as Clausewitz describes it) rather than the physical.

That’s what Social Justice Warfare is—an expression of the moral over the physical elements of warfare. It is the idea that “diversity is our strength” and that the progressive policies of so-called “social justice” have a place in winning wars. Social Justice Warfare holds that political orthodoxies can overcome the intrinsic violence of war. Then it dawned on me: Social Justice Warfare is the modern equivalent of the pre-World War I French military doctrine of “élan.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll