August 13, 2026

FAKING IT ALL OVER AGAIN: Remember Hillary Clinton’s unbelievably fake Southern accent on the 2016 campaign trail? Well, putting up fake fronts is even more prevalent among Democrats these days, according to the Issues & Insights (I&I) crew.

“This week, to cite just the most recent example, a group of ‘Republicans for Talarico’ disbanded after it turned out that they were actually just a bunch of lifelong Democrats in disguise, but not before MS NOW gave them some free airtime,” I&I explains, referring to Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.

Then there is AOC, apparently so uninformed about Dixie susurration, that she’s now trying out her own Yankee-fied nonsense on the campaign trail. And don’t forget Michigan Democratic Senate aspirant Abdul El-Sayed, who has described himself as a “Dr.” despite having no such license. There are many more at I&I.

Posted at 3:14 pm by Mark Tapscott

THEY ENJOY SOMETHING OF A REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE ADVANTAGE: Ukrainian Drones Outmatch US Army in Exercise.

Ukrainian troops from the battle-tested 412th Regiment of Unmanned Systems Forces, known as Nemesis, effectively eliminated a U.S. armored brigade during the Combined Resolve exercise in April and May. Roughly 3,500 American personnel, primarily from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, participated.

Ukrainian reconnaissance drones quickly located American armored vehicles, whose movement kicked up dust and made them visible from above.

Explosive-dropping and first-person-view, or FPV, drones then moved in.

The Ukrainians were registering simulated kills so rapidly that American vehicles had to be returned to the battlefield, or “re-spawned,” to keep the exercise running, according to the Journal.

The Americans adapted during the two-week engagement, improving their use of dispersion, concealment, and electronic warfare.

Ukrainian operators eventually switched sides and helped U.S. forces employ drones offensively, where the Americans performed more effectively.

This is why we train — and in this case, we got to train with the best.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

THIS IS A BIT TOO ON THE NOSE: Literal Clowns Entertain Migrants Preparing To Cross Into Britain.

Once they arrive in England, former Tory MP Edwina Curry (sarcastically, I think) suggests even more fun and games be arranged:

But perhaps there’s a simple — albeit expensive — solution to all of England’s woes. Numerous cruise lines own small islands for their passengers to visit. Why not scale up this idea? ‘How much is it?’ Elon Musk jokes about buying UK ‘to establish free speech.’

Instead of England becoming Orwell’s Airstrip One from 1984, why not Starbase One!

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT:

Bateman’s tweet concludes, “The entertainment business has been steadily drained from this place for at least a decade. LA will soon be hollowed out just like Detroit. It is becoming just sprawling city with no central industry at all.”

Related: Democrat CA Gov. Nominee Xavier Becerra Blinks, Calls for Paramount-Warner Settlement.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

VICTORIA TAFT: The Left Is Coming for Your County Sheriff. “The left’s favorite billionaire oligarch, George Soros, has poured money into the campaigns for secretary of state and district attorney candidates over the years in an effort to place anti-law enforcement and anti-incarceration activists in control of elections and law and order—the very foundations of civil society. Now, the left is coming for your county sheriff—the last local law man or woman elected to office by the people.”

Posted at 2:18 pm by Stephen Green

THAT RIGHT THERE IS THE ONLY REASON:

Well, that and the money-laundering.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Class clowns: the triumph of inanity over academia.

I was surprised to find an article in Shakespeare Quarterly ‘refusing to celebrate’ the quatercentenary of the publication of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio. The author reasoned that we should not be ‘dedicating our energies, at a time of international emergency, to the production of ever more scholarship on a 400-year-old book’. If this is really his view, we have to wonder what he is doing in the English department of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge.

The author goes on to blame the Folio for climate change, arguing that Henry and Emily’s Folger Shakespeare Library collection ‘was built from the money he made working for the Standard Oil Company and its later derivatives, which became the progenitors of ExxonMobil’. He then asks us to reflect ‘on the extent to which modern cultural dispensations float on an often unacknowledged reservoir of fossil fuels’. Drill, baby, drill.

Exit quote: “If your life’s great passion is the study of bouncy castles, pole dancing or writing essays on autoethnography, there ought to be nothing to stop you from working at Toys R Us, a gentleman’s club or the Guardian. But these people have all chosen to pursue academia. They are attracted to the status it confers. This was the world in which Jason Arday thrived. His colleagues at Cambridge were carrying out research on how fairy tales can break the gender binary in playgrounds or writing ‘a self-portrait of an artist who teaches’. Is it really surprising that his error-ridden thesis didn’t stand out against this backdrop?”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

SPLC’S DEMAND FOR RACISM FAR OUTSTRIPPED THE SUPPLY:

See also: Hate crimes.

Posted at 1:02 pm by Stephen Green

BILL GERTZ: General says China space weapons threat a major challenge.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of the Colorado-based Space Command, said the space weapons deployed by China and Russia are “in some ways getting harder to fight.”

“We operate in a domain in which our opponents have built a suite of counterspace capabilities to hold our satellites at risk in all orbital regimes,” Gen. Whiting told the Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Alabama.

The four-star general singled out the Chinese Communist Party for what he called its “breathtaking pace of space and counterspace” weapons development.

Asked the most significant issue he faces as a commander, Gen. Whiting said: “I think the ongoing greatest challenge is just the speed at which China is moving to rapidly improve their space capabilities and the threat that that potentially poses.”

People’s Liberation Army space weapons now include a “robust suite” of arms and capabilities that can blind and deafen U.S. military forces by disrupting and destroying satellites, he said.

“These include direct descent [anti-satellite] missiles, ground-based lasers, jammers and maneuverable co-orbital ASATs and dual-use satellites like the SJ-21,” he said.

What the U.S. has — in SpaceX — is unmatched lift and satellite-manufacturing capacity. What nobody has yet is the means to deal with a possible Kessler syndrome resulting from orbital warfare.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

IT MAY BE LATER THAN YOU THINK:

Posted at 12:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Crash And Burn – The Patty Jenkins Story.

The Drinker’s next “Crash and Burn” video may have just written itself:

Tweet concludes, “‘People like it, but they really don’t want to make it because it’s [got a] wall-to-wall trans cast. I have to get creative and figure out different ways that I can get this in front of people,’ Wachowski said on KCRW’s ‘The Business’ podcast. ‘This is a script that was extremely important for me to write. It was a response to what is happening in the world for trans people, and it gave me a hugely cathartic receptacle to dump all of my anger and rage and frustration into.’”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT ALWAYS SEEMS TO COME DOWN TO MURDERING JEWS:

Slightly off-topic, but this came to mind.

More than 30 years ago, Ralph Peters wrote in the afterword to The War in 2020: “The destruction of Israel in a nuclear exchange, for example, will be less likely to trigger Islamic unity than to utterly dissolve it. Unable to direct their frustrations at the Zionist devil, the Islamic nations of the Eurasian landmass would quickly rediscover the holy and delectable mission of slaughtering each other over trivia.”

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green

STEPHEN HALBROOK: Second Amendment Roundup: The Militia of the Sea: The Marque and Reprisal Clause as Textual Proof of Private Heavy-Arms Ownership at the Founding. “Under Article I, the only power over private armed force at sea that Congress received was power over the commissioning of that private force on behalf of the United States. Congress did not give permission for the ship owner to arm the ship with cannon. The Founders who ratified the Constitution’s Article I in 1788 and the Second Amendment three years later in 1791 did not appear troubled that private parties owned heavily armed ships. Indeed, they took the widespread ownership of such heavily armed ships as a given, so much so that Congress principally concerned itself not with the private ownership of significant armaments, but rather with the transformation of that private ownership into a lawful use on behalf of the federal government itself.”

Posted at 12:12 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THIS WILL BE MY NEXT FAST FOOD BURGER REVIEW: America’s burger wars have crowned a new fast-food favorite — while the loser’s popularity is in freefall. I’ve always liked a good Whopper — the qualification being that BK’s quality control is uneven, though not as badly as Hardees — and I suspect this will be better than the not-awful Big Arch.

But how will it compare to the Big Glenn?

And a while back I did recommend that McDonalds get a CEO who actually likes burgers. BK has learned the lesson: “BK president Tom Curtis appeared in Whopper’s relaunch ad, along with another clip depicting him gleefully devouring a Whopper in an apparent at McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski’s cringeworthy attempt at eating a Big Arch this past Spring.”

More free advice for Mickey D’s: Bring back the Beef Tallow Fries. They were the best thing you had and you got rid of them in the face of bullying from food activists.

Posted at 12:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SCENES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

Posted at 11:58 am by Stephen Green