March 16, 2026

DATA REPUBLICAN: The Blob Eats Its Own: War on the Rocks and the Capture of Realist Journalism. What the doxxing of Cynical Publius reveals about how the national security establishment protects itself. “That is the tell. Not the funding, not the network, not the deletion of “realist lens” from the About page — though all of it is documented. The tell is this: the publication that was supposed to be the honest after-action review became the institution that shuts it down. The correction mechanism became the immune system. When someone tried to do the work the publication was founded to do, the publication exposed him to the people he was criticizing and let them take it from there.”

Plus: “The people tasked with explaining why America keeps losing are the same people defending the institutions that produced the losses.”

Posted at 10:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ANDREW KLAVAN: Why Movies Suck — It’s the Spirit of the Age.

I found the Oscar winners from the eighties generally good, though not really great. But as we reached the nineties, something odd happened. I started to see films that were exceptionally well-made, some even delightful to watch, but which had at their core an essential element of dishonesty.

Dances with Wolves, which, like Pocahontas and Avatar, partakes of the Rousseauian fallacy that there is something innocent and benevolent about the lives of primitives. Schindler’s List, which presents itself as the authoritative movie about the Holocaust, and yet centers on acts of decency that were so rare an exception as to be nearly non-existent. The English Patient, a dishonorable and subtly antisemitic picture, in which the primary act of love involves giving traitorous aid to the Nazis because who wins the war doesn’t matter so much as getting the girl. (The opposite theme of Casablanca, a far, far better film.) And American Beauty, a picture that pretends to be about a straight man but isn’t, and hasn’t got a single honest frame in it from start to finish.

Let me repeat: these aren’t necessarily bad films. They’re certainly talented films. Most of them are watchable, even good. Schindler’s List would be a great film if you removed its overblown sense of itself, and its childish Spielbergian-Freudian theorizing about the Nazis’ motives. They are simply films with a cancer of dishonesty eating away at their hearts.

Read the whole thing. The 1990s was the decade in which Hollywood went nihilistic on WWII, and while Harvey Weinstein’s productions such as The English Patient and The Reader were the chief cause, even Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan wasn’t immune: What Happened To World War II Movies?

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SECOND-WORST GERMAN CHANCELLOR IN A CENTURY:

Posted at 8:52 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PAUL EHRLICH WON THE DEBATE: Just read the comments.

Responses to that 2021 article were similar: “Maybe fewer humans will help the planet and some of humanity survive.” “At an early age, I saw that the explosion of humans on this planet was ruining the world for future generations and all other living species.” “Mother Nature has an answer to her pressing concerns and we are not needed.”

And the New York Times published four letters in response to its latest piece on low and falling birth rates, and all four were against babies.

This isn’t unique to the New York Times readership, though. The Washington Post’s former letters editor wrote that many of her writers really thought people were bad.

Sure enough, when I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about how to make your life easier by having many children, the 6,000 comments were almost all negative.

“In this world of over-consumption having so many kids seems selfish. More than that morally reprehensible … relies on a patriarchal view of the family.”

“The planet is already overpopulated. The author’s disdain for science and the nature of exponential increase is obvious.”

The sad fact is that millions of people believe the planet is overpopulated. That view is grounded in a belief that humans are basically bad.

Related:

“It’s very rare that you have an intellectual who so clearly would’ve been a Mao or Hitler if he had the chance.” Perhaps not as rare you might think.

 

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

FACE IT, HOLLYWOOD — YOU’RE BORING VIEWERS WITH YOUR SELF-RIGHTEOUS, OUT OF TOUCH, NAVEL-GAZING OSCARS:

Noting that no Brits were nominated in the best actor category, he quipped, “A British spokesperson said: ‘Yeah, but at least we arrest our pedophiles.’”

That might come as news to all the young girls who were victimized by grooming gangs there. And somewhere from hell, late BBC pedo Jimmy Savile — never arrested — was laughing maniacally.

During his monologue, it felt like O’Brien was on a Oscars justification tour for the show even being aired, noting that there were 31 countries across six continents represented among the nominees, “with people speaking different languages, working hard to make something of beauty. We pay tribute tonight, not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of qualities today — optimism.”

Another pat on the back.

Despite the public’s very small appetite for Hollywood lectures, actors’s enthusiasm for delivering them have never been greater.

It must have been tough for Javier Bardem to choose just two pieces of virtue-signaling flair. On Sunday, he wore an old anti-war button and beamed like a child who got a sticker from the dentist for having no cavities.

Presenting the award for Best International Feature Film, Bardem smugly barked his favorite utterly meaningless phrase, “Free Palestine.” He forgot to add “from Hamas.”

Let celebs get it all out of their systems, as they’ve only got two more years left on broadcast TV: Oscars Bolts From ABC to YouTube Starting in 2029.

Outside of M-SNOW, YouTube is the perfect location for an increasingly niche leftist political show:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OUT ON A LIMB: ‘War on Poverty’ May Have Created a Permanent Underclass, Economists Say.

America’s “War on Poverty,” launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, has expanded into a vast array of federal social welfare programs that today exceed $1 trillion per year.

Upon signing the Economic Opportunity Act, Johnson stated: “This is not in any sense a cynical proposal to exploit the poor with a promise of a handout,” but rather a means to “help our people find their footing for a long climb toward a better way of life.”

While poverty has declined significantly over the past half-century, however, recent reports indicate that these programs simultaneously reduced the share of private income for America’s poorest, locking them into long-term dependency and limiting their ability to move up into the middle class.

A recent study by economists Kevin Corinth and Richard Burkhauser, which analyzed poverty rates before and after America embarked on the War on Poverty, concluded that, while poverty decreased substantially since 1964, this was achieved largely by welfare supplanting “market” income such as wages, investments, and profits. In addition, before the 1960s, market income had succeeded in reducing poverty at similar rates to what the War on Poverty achieved.

As President Reagan said in 1987, “In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.”

Posted at 8:15 pm by Ed Driscoll

BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DID:

Posted at 7:18 pm by Stephen Green

A SURPRISINGLY CLEAR-EYED ANALYSIS, FROM AL-JAZEERA, NO LESS: “The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why.”

“When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.”

 

Posted at 6:54 pm by Charles Glasser

SPRINGTIME FOR PLATNER:

“Roger, did you have a chance to read ‘Springtime for Hitler?’” “Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it’s just drenched with historical goodies like that!”

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

SAY ANYTHING:

● Shot:

● Chaser: Sen. Markey, Reps. Espaillat, Clarke Announce Legislation to Ban U.S. Fossil Fuel Exports.

—Markey’s Website, May 18th, 2023.

● Hangover: Senator Markey and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Introduce Green New Deal Resolution.

—Markey’s Website, February 7th, 2019.

AOC and Markey’s 2019 Green Nude Eel sought to ban pretty much everything, so it’s good to see Trump using Cuba as a small test case before implementing their proposals here: Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn’t We Be Celebrating?

UPDATE: Greta Thunberg calls for oil tankers to be sent to Cuba as nation suffers complete blackout. 

Posted at 6:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS IS NO TIME TO GO WOBBLY:

Posted at 5:43 pm by Stephen Green

SUPREMELY PROGRESSIVE: Iran Becomes First Nation in World History Led by Gay Amputee.

Credit where credit is due: Iran appears to have scored a remarkable victory for inclusive representation on the global stage. The U.S. intelligence community recently assessed that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the dearly departed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is “probably gay,” the New York Post revealed on Monday. The news comes amid reports that “one or two” of the younger Khamenei’s legs were amputated after he suffered severe injuries last month in the U.S.-Israeli airstrike that killed his father.

Assuming the reports are true, Mojtaba Khamenei would be the first-ever LGBT amputee to lead a sovereign nation. Iran’s monumental achievement is certain to invigorate the American progressives who mourned the elder Khamenei’s demise. Many were already inclined to take the rogue nation’s side in its ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel. Democratic activists have long championed the view that inclusive representation—elevating members of historically marginalized groups to positions of power—is inherently meaningful and morally necessary.

Iran could even be in the process of super-sizing its supreme progressivism: “While it’s illegal to be gay in Iran, the government does allow sex changes to spare gay men from criminal punishment (such as, er, the death penalty). Cockburn hears rumors that Mojtaba is currently undergoing secret treatment in a Russian hospital. Could this regime-change war bring Iran not only its first gayatollah, but a female supreme leader?”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘SNL’ Mocks Tucker Carlson, Gets Pundit 100 Percent Wrong.

“SNL” scribes don’t even know who Carlson is in 2026. He went from a firebrand Fox News star to a raging Israel hater who promotes conspiracy theorists and skewers the U.S. Military.

The show’s obvious lack of ideological diversity behind the scenes allowed this limp sketch to flower. It missed its target by a wide margin.

Culhane’s impression nailed some of Carlson’s catch phrases and his maniacal laugh, but it missed who the pundit has become over the last two years.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green