July 14, 2026

YOU DON’T SAY:

Bless the New York Post for never running out of lame excuses to run photos of attractive women.

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

YES, IT’S TIME FOR A CRACKDOWN ON INSURRECTIONISTS AND SEDITIONISTS:

Posted at 1:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE SERVER FARM: Little House On The Prairie Goes Woke.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “bootstrapping mythology” in her original works does not “square” with audiences. George Tann is a black man. Young Reboot Laura becomes friends with an Indigenous girl named Good Eagle. Good Eagle’s family befriends the Ingalls family who snaked their logs to build their home. This nice, Ingalls family stole their timber and their land but, they are gracious enough to forgive but never let them forget it. Then, there’s the reboot of the Oleson’s:

Netflix’s Ingalls family are good people, even by 2026 standards, and you can see it in contrast with the Jameses. The Jameses are town-dwelling rich folk who don’t appear in the Little House books but seem to be an adaptation of the Oleson family … The Jameses’ vision for Independence — hierarchy, respectability, a church, a school — first seduces, then repels, the more gentle-minded Ingallses, Ma and Mary. The James matriarch, Jemma, played by Mary Holland, brings a welcome comedic hateability to this sunny show.”-Rebecca Onion, Slate

Got it. The Olesons are the token MAGA family. And they’re there for comedic relief. Sounds like Rebecca Sonneshine is a bit of a passive-aggressive Nelly Oleson, don’t cha think?

That development plays surprisingly well in Ireland:

Naturally, the show runner is playing the “I don’t even know what ‘woke’ means” card to defend herself:

TV writer Rebecca Sonnenshine, who came up with the reboot of the show has this to say about the recent woke criticisms:

“I’m not even sure what ‘woke’ means to people anymore, to be honest. I know what I think it means, which is the definition of it being aware and alert to social injustice and prejudice, in particular racial prejudice. So, when people say, ‘I hope it’s not woke,’ I think, ‘Really? Oh, that’s interesting.’ But I don’t think people are using it in that manner; I think it’s just become a catch-all word for things that I don’t quite understand. If I had to sum it up, what people are afraid of is that something from their childhood will be portrayed in a way that scares them.”-Rebecca Sonneshine.

Maybe it’s for the best she didn’t bother reading the source material:

On the other hand, it’s a surprisingly diverse cast, a series perfectly made for, as the Critical Drinker would say with 100 gallons of reverb on his voice, “modern audiences:”

But will there be a season two?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMY CURTIS: With Extreme Poverty at All-Time Lows, Democratic Socialists Hope to Reverse the Trend.

Capitalism is the world’s great equalizer, and it has done more to raise people out of poverty than any other economic system on the planet. That, of course, is why the communists and their socialist cousins hate it. Under the ideal communist regime, there are only two classes: the wealthy, which consists of the politicians and those who are adequate bootlickers, and the poor.

Communism has to be that way. A robust middle class negates the need for centralized planning and massive government control over every aspect of our lives, from the cradle to the mass grave. That’s why the commies have to destroy anything and everything that builds up the middle class: culture, religion, and especially the nuclear family.

Socialism isn’t just about “the equal sharing of miseries.” It’s also about creating misery where there isn’t any — about the only thing it creates in abundance.

Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green

VW CEO TAKING SOME VICIOUS LUMPS ON HIS FAHRVERGNOGGEN:

Oliver Blume took over the Volkswagen Group in 2022, after spending years in the company’s other divisions. For example, he started as a planner for paint and body shop operations at Audi when he was 28, and then, from 2015 until this promotion, he had been the CEO of VW subsidiary Porsche. Obviously, a capable guy who grew up within the unique VW system.

That is both a good and bad thing, considering the harrowing times the company faces right now.

Three weeks ago I told you all how an internal memo had surfaced detailing the company’s plans to do some drastic cutbacks – up to 100,000 layoffs, shuttering up to four plants, and going through their extensive business portfolio to see what they could offload for some upfront operating cash.

German labor unions went berserk – no surprise there.

Well, last Thursday, the turnaround plans were officially confirmed when Blume presented them to Volkswagen’s supervisory board in Wolfsburg for approval.

The plans were just as quickly shot out of the water – ‘torpedoed,’ as Bloomberg describes it – and in doing so offered a kind of horrifying look into what is strangling Germany’s former industry giant as it struggles to right its sinking ship.

Make sure you pay particular attention to that third paragraph concerning the make-up of the board that just told its CEO ‘nein.’ This would be a state of affairs inconceivable to an American.

In his 2007 book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg wrote, “Democratic, and most Republican, health-care plans don’t call for expropriating the private property of doctors and pharmaceutical companies or even for the cessation of employer-provided health care. Rather, they want to use corporations for government by proxy. There’s a reason liberal economists joke that General Motors is a health-care provider that makes cars as an industrial by-product.” In its dotage, “The People’s Car” manufacturer has descended into a similar state. Similarly, in 2024, Germany’s radical environmentalists began implementing a self-imposed update of America’s WWII-era Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize das Vaterland. It looks like those plans are continuing apace.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SPOILER: NO ONE AT NETFLIX READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL. OR AT LEAST CARED:

Not sure anyone is looking forward to The Vampire Diariafication of Little House.

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

AGREED:

Posted at 11:56 am by Stephen Green

UNEXPECTEDLY! Khanna reveals the billionaire tax is just the beginning.

Last week, Khanna confirmed that the “billionaire tax” is just the start and that they will go on to target the wealth of other citizens as an untapped resource of new revenue.

For years, some of us have warned that the billionaire tax was a ruse. Sponsors like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Khanna were using billionaires as an easy political target, but they were unlikely to stop there.
…
That is precisely what Khanna finally admitted last week in a Substack post, arguing that “the tax should not stop at billionaires; it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.”
…
If they can pack the Court and greenlight a billionaire tax, there would be no limit to then moving the threshold wealth level downward. Once that Rubicon is crossed, Democrats would suddenly be able to tax trillions in the property and possessions of citizens.

And then it’s all over. Nobody owns anything, except by someone else’s favor.

Vote as though your life, liberty, and property depend upon it — because they do.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green

THIS IS WHAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO CELEBRATE?

Posted at 10:54 am by Stephen Green

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: NY sees dramatic exodus of millionaires — causing nearly $11B loss in tax revenue.

New York’s share of US millionaires dramatically declined in recent years, causing a nearly $11 billion loss in much-needed tax revenue in just one year, according to a bombshell new analysis.

The study released Monday by the Citizen Budget Commission showed the Empire State’s share of the nation’s millionaires dipped from 12.7% to 8.7% between 2010 and 2022 – the largest decline of any state.

“New York’s declining share of high-income taxpayers has meaningful consequences,” the analysis states.

“Had New York maintained its share of the nation’s millionaires over the past decade, personal income tax collections would have been substantially higher – roughly $10.7 billion more in tax year 2022.”

The study comes amid fears that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to “tax the rich” will drive even more wealthy out of New York City – and provides an at-times disquieting snapshot of stagnation gripping the Empire State for years before the young socialist took office.

I had been assured that Other People’s Money was an unlimited resource.

Since the trend predates Mamdani, it makes you wonder how bad things will get once he really gets the city on the path to True Communism.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

YES:

Posted at 10:23 am by Stephen Green

HEH: CNBC’s Woke ‘Worst States’ List Accidentally Makes Red America Look Great. “Other than crime rates, which most often occur in red-state cities, which are the bluest areas of said states, the criteria for ‘quality of life’ that CNBC uses are woke as a joke. Environmentalism, free healthcare, unions, and prioritizing the rainbow are what CNBC looked at.”

I miss living in a red state — and I didn’t even move.

Posted at 10:08 am by Stephen Green