April 13, 2026

DON’T FALL FOR IT [UPDATED AND BUMPED]:

Updates:

And:

I’m not sure exactly what I expected from the first American Pope, but it wasn’t this.

Posted at 6:42 pm by Stephen Green

OUT: MONEYCHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE. IN: THE MONEYCHANGERS ARE THE TEMPLE.

Posted at 6:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TRUMP HAS DEMS IN A ‘STRAIT’-JACKET:

If President Donald Trump really wants to drive crazed Democrats off a cliff, he would burn an Iranian flag on the White House lawn while chanting “Death to Iran.”

That would get the doomsday Democrats and the messianic mullahs in Tehran talking. The two allies could hold a joint press conference to impeach Trump.

They could use the event to add to his alleged “war crimes,” which include threatening to wipe a nuclear armed Iran off the map, something the U.S should have done seven presidents ago.

It could have happened in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter when revolutionary Islamic “students” invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage.

Or it surely could have taken place under President Ronald Reagan when the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah killed 241 U.S. marines and sailors with a truck bomb in Lebanon in 1983. It was the largest number of marines killed in one day since Iwo Jima.

While the two Bush presidents—George H.W. Bush and Georg W. Bush—invaded Iraq, which had no nuclear weapons, a couple of times, Iran, which was developing one got a pass.

Besides the Dems, Trump has another far-left totalitarian regime in a “Strait”-jacket as well: “A broken Iran means China has to buy American, and any plans to pose a threat to Taiwan were put on indefinite hold. The Iranian regime keeps doubling down on this nonsense. Because what else can they do?”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLONIZATION, STRAIGHT UP:

It’s also meant to be intimidating, if I had to guess.

Posted at 5:51 pm by Stephen Green

SWALWELL’S BLANKET PARTY:

The Dems depantsed the repulsive Eric Swalwell over the weekend in an attack with something like the Pearl Harbor effect. It swiftly sunk Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign. We followed the depantsing, but without quite the humorous detachment of Wall Street Journal Free Expression editor Matthew Hennessey. There are several interesting angles to the story and he inflicts glancing blows on most of them. He doesn’t expressly mention the apparent knowledge of members of the press about Swalwell’s way with women.

But what will become of Swalwell’s campaign merch? Heh, indeed:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS:

I know, Sandy! I was thinking exactly the same thing back in 2019.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MR. KISS KISS FANG FANG CRASHES OUT:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: The Rising Tide of Anti-AI Violence.

The attempted firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home should be a wake-up call. Had the attacker, who also reportedly made threats against OpenAI’s offices, hit a window rather than the side of the house, against which his Molotov cocktail merely “bounced” off, the event could have been far more horrific.

Just a couple of days later, two men were alleged to have fired on Altman’s house, which should have set the conditions for a national conversation about the horrifying prospect of revivified, violent Luddism.

To its credit, the Washington Post editorial board tried to start that very conversation last week when its members raised alarms over a violent attack on an Indianapolis-based lawmaker’s house — an attack in which 13 bullets were fired at his home. “The gunman left a note on the lawmaker’s doorstep,” the Post observed, “NO DATA CENTERS.”

The editorial linked that act of violence to a broader hostility toward the construction of data centers, which facilitate modern marvels like video streaming services, cloud data storage, and, yes, artificial intelligence. “It wouldn’t be the first time in history that deranged Luddites turn to violence to fight the advancement of frontier technology,” the Post’s editors note.

Note that the attack wasn’t just aimed at Altman; “other AI CEOs were also on his hit list:”

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOW THAT’S ONE WELL-PLAYED HISTORICAL REFERENCE:

I posted earlier that the sun had set on the British Empire, but I should have added that it’s also setting on the UK.

Posted at 4:03 pm by Stephen Green

SAD: Navy Calls It Quits On Attack Submarine USS Boise’s Never Ending Overhaul.

The U.S. Navy has abandoned plans to return the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Boise to active duty. This brings an end to the saga of a still-incomplete major overhaul of the boat, which has lasted more than a decade now. In that time, it has become a poster child for the Navy’s worrisome struggles to tackle huge maintenance backlogs, as well as larger concerns about the availability, or lack thereof, of naval shipyard capacity in the United States.

The Navy announced its decision to inactivate Boise, which was first commissioned into service in 1992, earlier today.

“After a rigorous, data-driven analysis, we’ve made the tough but necessary decision to inactivate the USS Boise,” Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle, Chief of Naval Operations, the service’s top officer, said in a statement. “This strategic move allows us to reallocate America’s highly-skilled workforce to our highest priorities: delivering new Virginia and Columbia class submarines and improving the readiness of the current fleet. We owe it to our Sailors and the nation to make these tough calls to build a more capable and ready Navy.”

We lost years and years of service life from a billion-dollar attack sub because we the Navy couldn’t perform scheduled maintenance.

Decades of bipartisan neglect of our maritime logistics have expensive — and potentially dangerous — real-world consequences.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

NARRATIVE UBER ALLES:

Plus: “They called Meloni a fascist. None of these words actually mean anything to them.”

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE?

Posted at 3:01 pm by Stephen Green

TED KACZYNSKI, CALL YOUR OFFICE: ‘Close to midnight’: Alleged Sam Altman firebomber wrote of fears AI would end humanity. “San Francisco police said Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home on Russian Hill shortly before 4 a.m. Friday, though security personnel were able to extinguish the fire without injury. Officers arrested him hours later near OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters, where they said he was threatening to burn down the building.”

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

OH:

Posted at 2:29 pm by Stephen Green

SAD: Another Red State, Fully Californicated. “Instead of Silicon Mountain, Colorado is quickly becoming ‘an economic backwater,’ as SLI put it, ‘an omen for what happens when Red states go blue.'”

Posted at 2:15 pm by Stephen Green