February 27, 2026

ENVIRONMENTALISTS NEVER PROTEST CHINA BECAUSE CHINA ALREADY HAS A COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT.

Posted at 6:28 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GOOD:

Posted at 6:09 pm by Glenn Reynolds

A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OUT ON A LIMB:

Perhaps it’s time to finally implement Andrew Klavan’s One State Solution to the Middle East:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Stellantis Lost $26 Billion, Now It’s Betting on Jeeps and V-8s. “Stellantis previously warned it would incur about $26 billion in charges as it backtracks on its timeline and investment in electric vehicles whose demand has slowed compared with growth projections at the time the decisions and investments were made. Many automakers have had write-downs as well, but Stellantis’ is notably higher. Ford took a $19.5 billion hit in December and GM reported it will take a $6 billion charge. EV sales continue to grow, but not at the pace automakers anticipated, which prompted investment in more capacity than needed at this time.”

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Drone Warfare Comes to the Sunshine State. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn about the last person who should ever dial 911, the first Anti-COVID Prophet, and what they’re doing in Kentucky for mating season.”

Posted at 4:23 pm by Stephen Green

MARK HEMINGWAY: Model City: Portland’s Journey From Symbol of Chic to Shabby.

If you’re familiar with the recent history of Portland – I am a third-generation Oregonian who has lived in the city – it was once the epicenter of urban cool. In 2009, there was so much tourism that The Oregonian newspaper ran a column headlined, “Sorry, NYT, We’re Just Not That Into You,” grousing that all the glowing national press about the city was making it harder for locals to get into their favorite restaurants. By the time the popular comedy show “Portlandia” premiered in 2011, the city was a genuine cultural phenomenon.

Last fall, after the city acquired a reputation for crime, homelessness, and dysfunction, Oregon politicians rushed to media outlets to assure the nation that the city was not literally on fire. They were responding to comments from President Trump, who said, “the place is burning down, just burning down,” following violent protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. CNN ran a “fact check” on Trump’s multiple statements about the city burning.

Oregon politicians were probably right that the president’s hyperbole was not helping defuse a tense situation. And unlike other cities famous for urban blight, Portland is still a beautiful place to live. Located at the base of 11,000-foot-tall Mt. Hood, and built around two major rivers, it has one of the most spectacular natural settings of any city in America. Last fall, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden traveled around the city and posted videos highlighting the picturesque neighborhoods to show that Portland can be a wonderful place to live, in contrast to Trump’s claim that the city is “war-ravaged.”

But in a figurative sense – and at least one literal sense – Trump is right. Portland is constantly on fire. In the year following July 2024, Portland had 6,268 fire-related incidents – and 40% of the fires in the city are a direct result of Portland’s out-of-control vagrancy.

Even city leaders feel the heat. In 2024, Portland City Councilor Rene Gonzalez’s car burned in a fire that authorities believe was intentionally set while it was parked in front of his family’s home. No one was arrested, but a website associated with Portland’s notorious Antifa network claimed responsibility. Then last October, a fire consumed a carport belonging to Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos, burning her car and damaging the side of her house. Authorities eventually determined the fire was started by a vagrant trying to stay warm.

The city also has much more sophisticated criminal problems. As Minneapolis uncovers evidence that it has lost billions of dollars in fraudulent schemes by the city’s Somali community, Jeff Eager, the former mayor of Bend, Oregon, has published a series of alarming reports revealing that Portland may have a similar large-scale problem with its welfare programs – some of it connected to more menacing kinds of organized crime.

Read the whole thing, which has rare bipartisan approval:

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

I LIKE A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING: Armed Self-Defense: Pennsylvania Home Invasion Stopped Thanks to the Application of Hot Lead. “The burglar then called Mr. Homeowner’s bluff. Maybe the intruder thought the homeowner didn’t have the stones to use actually his gun. Maybe the bad guy thought the gun wasn’t really loaded, just kept in the home as a magic talisman against evil. The would-be burglar found out, however, that the gun was very real and that Mr. Homeowner had the stones to use it. A shot rang out, striking the intruder in the leg and dropping him right there. Police rolled up promptly to find the perp making a mess on the carpet. An ambulance hauled him off to the hospital and cops launched their investigation. No charges were filed against the homeowner. Lt. Steven Brooks made it clear the shooting appears justified, a clear case of armed self-defense while protecting a family.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CAN YOU HAVE A RULES-BASED ORDER WHEN THE RULES DON’T APPLY TO ONE TEAM?

Posted at 3:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Vanderbilt investigates math professor over anti-Israel calculus problem. “Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is Mediterranean Sea on the west and Jordan River on the east. The height (from south to north) is 2.6 times width (from east to west). From river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km in 1946. The land decreases by 250 km2/year due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

HERE WE GO:

Exit quote: “When an ambassador tells his own people to leave the country he is assigned to, he is not managing risk. He is clearing the blast radius.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Paramount Wins — This Is HUGE.

Related: CNN Anxiety Mounts as Paramount Nears Control: ‘People Think It Could Be the End.’

When CNN anchor Jake Tapper broke into coverage on Thursday evening with a major Warner Bros. Discovery sale update, he remarked that the news “affects everybody I’m looking at right now in the studio.”

Anxiety is high inside CNN, as staffers grapple with the growing likelihood that Paramount’s David Ellison — who appointed Free Press cofounder Bari Weiss to reshape CBS News and has recalled having “great conversations” with President Donald Trump about acquiring CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery — could ultimately take control of the cable news channel.

“It’s concerning,” one CNN staffer told TheWrap, noting how Ellison posed days earlier alongside Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, each giving a thumbs up before attending the State of the Union together. The unease comes alongside reporting that David Ellison has promised the White House changes to CNN, while his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has talked about the possibility of axing specific hosts.

While CNN may not be the most coveted property in the WBD stable — rival suitor Netflix only desired HBO and the studio assets — it is the most politically radioactive. Trump has bristled at CNN’s coverage for years, blasting stars like Jim Acosta during his first term and Kaitlan Collins in the second. He made clear in December that the news channel, rather than TNT or the Food Network, was front of mind in the WBD sale saga, declaring that “it’s imperative that CNN be sold” and placed under new management.

“People think it could be the end of CNN,” a second staffer told TheWrap. “ As much as people say that’s not possible, what’s to say that’s not possible?”

The fallout from the New York Times’ 2020 struggle session over Tom Cotton’s op-ed continues to be massive. I hope it was worth it back then for all concerned.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Members List of Secretive ‘Bohemian Grove’ Men’s Club Is Leaked “Your humble columnist didn’t have the leak of the roster for the ‘Bohemian Grove’ secret society on her radar, yet here we are. While we await the denials to come pouring in, allow me to officially welcome you to this week’s West Coast, Messed Coast™ column that brings you the titillating outrages, wokeness, and weirdness of California, Oregon, and Washington.”

Posted at 2:19 pm by Stephen Green

THE MASKS CAME OFF OVERNIGHT POST-ELECTION:

Posted at 2:12 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AND THAT’S JUST THE UPPER STAGE:

Posted at 2:03 pm by Stephen Green

FOR CERTAIN REPUBLICANS, THAT’S A MIGHTY BIG IF: If GOP Wants To Win The Midterms, They Need To Pass The SAVE Act. “While Trump’s policies are really popular, the Republicans in Congress themselves are not that popular and Trump isn’t on the ballot. So you’ve got Dems all jacked up to … vote against Republicans, but what Republicans need to do is to deliver on the things they said they were going to do.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green

CHATGPT – IT’S NOT JUST FOR COLLEGE TERM PAPERS ANYMORE! Mark Oppenheimer: Kitty Kelley was assigned a review of my Judy Blume biography, but did she read it?

Kelley writes:

Judy Blume began life in 1938 as Judith Marcia Sussman, an Orthodox Jew born “scrawny and underweight” in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

I write the opposite: the Sussmans, far from being Orthodox, were secular and non-observant, and they seldom went to synagogue. (Also, I did not write that she was born scrawny, but rather that “Judy was the smallest child in the ­ house—​­brother David was four years ­ older—​­and she was scrawny, chronically underweight.” So the quotation is wrong, and the meaning is wrong—she was an underweight child, not an underweight newborn.)

Her father was a dentist; her mother kept house for Judy and her older brother. After Hebrew school and a bat mitzvah, Blume graduated from New York University with a B.A. in education.

In the book, I explain why Judy did not have a bat mitzvah.

“I married at twenty-one…everyone did,” she recalled.

This quotation is not in my book. The first part—“married at twenty-one”—exists, in a different context, but the stuff after the ellipsis is an invention.

Feeling “suffocated” in her first marriage, Blume divorced after several years and immediately rebounded to a second husband. She left him two years later and “cried every day,” she said. “Anyone who thinks my life is cupcakes is all wrong.” She married George Cooper in 1987, and they remain together to this day.

This is all fiction. “Several” years? She and John Blume were married over 15 years. There is no usage of “suffocated” to refer to her first marriage. Blume did not leave her second husband after just two years. She never said she “cried every day.” I don’t know where Kelley got all this, but not from my book.

And that line about cupcakes? It is not in my book either. So far as I know, Judy Blume has never used a baking-related metaphor, or any dessert-related metaphor, to describe her life. She has not compared her life to cupcakes, éclairs, gateaux basque, or Cinnabons. If she has, it’s news to me, and it’s not in my book.

(Update: on further Googling, I do find that cupcake quotation attributed to Blume on several websites, including a British astrology site that has Blume filed under “Capricorn research.” But the quotation is not in my book. So did Kelley decide to chuck my book aside and do her own Blume-related research, turning, as one does in such situations, to internet astrologers? And then attribute her research into my book?)

Well, she wouldn’t be the first woman writing for a high-profile Washington publication to break out the Ouija board, but as Oppenheimer rhetorically asks near the beginning of his Substack:

The month before your book is published is, for any writer, a stressful time. We ask ourselves many questions: Will it be reviewed? If so, will it be reviewed favorably? And, “Will legendary celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley kick back in her Jacuzzi, tell Alexa to ‘play smooth jazz,’ sip some bubbly, fire up ChatGPT, and insert its madcap hallucinations into a review of my book?”

It certainly sounds like the latter is exactly what happened.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll