July 7, 2026
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
The great secret of the last hundred years is that Progressivism is an elitist, technocratic ideology crafted by academia. It has NO working-class foundations at all. This desperate search for a believable marionette is hopeless. https://t.co/67jlMdrSEr pic.twitter.com/jtKhtMxUDV
— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreytucker) July 7, 2026
THE LEFT’S NAZI PROBLEM IS MUCH BIGGER THAN PLATNER: The New Brownshirts? “Antisemitic rhetoric on the far left increasingly echoes the propaganda of Nazi Germany.”
OLD AND BUSTED: The Bears Are Who We Thought They Were!
The New Hotness? The Nazi Tattoo Guy Is Exactly Who You Thought He Was.
The term “gaslighting” gets thrown around way too frequently in our political culture; sometimes it’s effectively used as a synonym for lying. But this . . . this felt like an unprecedented, large-scale gaslighting effort. A lot of the mainstream media coverage of Platner felt like a weird, coordinated effort to convince the people of Maine that the scuzziest guy the Democratic Party could find was as solid and reliable as the Brawny Paper Towel Man.
Jon Favreau, one of the Pod Save America hosts, told his followers at the end of April, “Graham Platner isn’t just our best and only chance to beat Susan Collins, he’s a good, decent man who’s struggled and grown and is always trying to do better. I hope everyone with reservations takes a little time to get to know the real-life version of him, not what the algorithm throws in our faces.” I refer you to My Cousin Vinny.
On Monday night, Favreau was singing a dramatically different tune. “Platner needs to drop out ASAP — these are awful, credible allegations. Said on the pod after the (also credible) June NYT story that his biggest problem going forward would be credibility. It’s now abundantly clear that he just hasn’t been honest about his past and can’t be trusted as a candidate for office.”
Why did people trust Platner, Favreau? Because you told them he was a good and decent man!
This morning, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg concedes she was completely fooled by the hype around Platner:
Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.
I do not say this lightly: If Platner fooled you, maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.
F. A. Hayek figured this out decades ago, and Lord Acton long before him. Power does not just attract “good” people. Lots of bad people want to be elected to high office, because they want all the things that come with power.
To believe Platner, you have to believe that he accidentally got a Nazi tattoo, and didn’t notice for 18 years, and his political director made up a story about him warning her of a controversial tattoo, and no one he sexted on Kik was underage, and his exes are making up the worst possible accusations about him. You must believe that Platner, who’s already been caught in several lies about his past, is telling the truth, and that a whole bunch of people who knew him well for many years are telling vicious lies about him, at great risk to their reputations.
Mitchell and Webb, the British comedy team who wrote and starred in the viral “Are we the baddies?!” sketch, are wearing Totenkopfs on their hats. Including in the video’s title card:
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record:
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 6, 2026
BROWNWASHING:
Is the DSA running every single minority member they have for office?
DSA is 89% white; their candidates look like the United Colors of Benneton. https://t.co/1D9u1a6UmY
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) July 6, 2026
OOF:
Elizabeth Warren wants to retract her endorsement of Graham Platner but she doesn’t want to look like an Indian giver.
— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) July 7, 2026
WHEN “VETTING” MEANS “LOTS OF OUT-OF-STATE MONEY”: The Left Has a New Narrative About Graham Platner, and Scott Jennings Just Nuked It.
STILL A KLEPTOCRACY: The Venezuelan Earthquakes Exposed Something — and It Wasn’t Just Shoddy Infrastructure.
NIGEL FARAGE RESIGNING FROM UK PARLIAMENT:
Reform UK leader and British Member of Parliament (MP) Nigel Farage announced he was resigning from Parliament on Tuesday.
Farage claimed he was resigning to force a by-election in his Clacton district and claimed he would run in it.
“Today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which will happen, I hope in short order,” he said in a press conference broadcast from the Reform UK YouTube channel.
“This will be a people vs. the establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go, and that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election,” he said.
Farage’s resignation followed a series of scandals surrounding gifts he received from wealthy donors while out of office.
Farage denied any wrongdoing, stating: “Let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money.”
As Leslie Nielsen said in Airplane!, good luck, I want you to know that we’re all counting on you: Farage’s gamble is all about seizing control of the narrative.
I PREFER TO UNBUNDLE THINGS USUALLY: I am torn on the PolyPill concept: Trials comparing the polypill to standard care need to be rigorous. The POLY-HF trial is not. But I am still not sure the polypill is a bad idea. “Many conditions in cardiology require multiple medications, for instance, high blood pressure, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. . . . Enter the polypill: what if you could take one tablet that had multiple drugs in it? This reduces the work of being a patient and it may even increase adherence to beneficial drugs.”
MAKE AMERICA FLORIDA FOR ONCE, AND PASS THE SAVE ACT:
People forget that Gov DeSantis beat this guy in 2018 by less than 0.5%.
He would’ve been our Governor during Covid, kept us locked down, and the country would’ve never been the same.
The reason he almost won was b/c deep blue Broward County kept “finding” votes weeks after… https://t.co/uHs9v8QBOP
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 7, 2026
“The vote fraud was stopped, DeSantis cleaned up our elections, and he won by almost 20% in 2022.”
MOLOTOV–RIBBENTROP PACT SHATTERED: Bernie Sanders says he told Graham Platner to ‘step aside.’
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: OPEC is in a struggle for its survival. It could mean $40 oil.
OPEC countries with major operations in the Persian Gulf mostly struggled to get their crude out to their customers. Iran’s closure and America’s subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz locked in a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
Several OPEC members – namely Iran, Iraq and Kuwait – had no choice but to shut in their crude production and wait.
Now that traffic in the strait has started to ramp up again, the jockeying for production quotas has begun. Iraq, the bloc’s second-largest oil producer, is reportedly the next shoe to drop – the country’s oil minister told Bloomberg that Iraq would have to decide whether or not to remain with OPEC if production targets don’t dramatically increase.
Iraq’s production was the hardest hit by the war, dropping by 75% to just over 1 million barrels a day in April and May – down from more than 4.5 million a day in January and February. Iraq wants permission to produce a record 5 million barrels a day coming out of the war, with a long-term aim of getting production up to 7 million barrels a day, Bloomberg reported.
At first I thought the OPEC nations were looking to take market share from Iran while they could. If they’re jockeying against one another, even better.
FLORIDA, MAN: Ex-Florida Democratic Governor Nominee Andrew Gillum Busted In Alabama For Drug Possession.
People forget that Gov DeSantis beat this guy in 2018 by less than 0.5%.
He would’ve been our Governor during Covid, kept us locked down, and the country would’ve never been the same.
The reason he almost won was b/c deep blue Broward County kept “finding” votes weeks after… https://t.co/uHs9v8QBOP
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 7, 2026
THEY’LL EVEN GASLIGHT YOU ON THE DAILY TEMPS:
powerful moments in bar chart technology pic.twitter.com/Wnje4hJR2q
— richard (@richard_normal) July 6, 2026
ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: New Yorkers Are Already Pissed at Mamdani, and He’s Just Getting Started.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Richard Dreyfuss’ ex-wife demands futuristic sex toy after running out of men in Idaho. “Emily said all her mom wants is to fulfill her longtime dream of owning a ‘sex robot,’ the San Francisco Standard reported.”
SCHRÖDINGER’S SENATOR: Mitch McConnell’s health emergency sparks questions on whether he will return to Senate.
REUTERS FORGOT TO INCLUDE “AGAIN” IN THE HEADLINE: Cuba begins to restore power to Havana following nationwide blackout.
RIGHT JOURNOS DECLARE INDEPENDENCE: It was seven years ago when Investors’ Business Daily (IBD) went down, taking with it one of the finest editorial page sections in the country. But members of the team writing the editorials and columns refused to wave a white flag.
So they started “Issues & Insight” (I&I) web site, which in the years since has consistently turned out superb free market/pro limited government-guided commentary on the issues of the day.
But being an independent editorial site on the Internet is no easy task and after trying all the ad partnerships (think Google’s AdSense), the team had enough of the censorship that came along with Big Tech. So they are now going 100% reader-supported.
Very much inspired by Mr. Jefferson’s original work, the I&I crew have now issued their own Declaration of Journalism Independence, and it is well-worth your time in giving it a good read.
SALENA ZITO: Young Washington: History’s ultimate gritty origin story.
The crushed stone along the quiet pathways here at the “Great Meadow” where Fort Necessity sits has always held wonder to me. Here is where 22-year-old George Washington, a brash, sometimes headstrong, but always ambitious young man trying to figure out his fate, suffered the first and only military surrender of his lifetime.
On the big screen, I’ve always imagined that the series of events that led to this moment, beginning with his run-in with the French Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre in present day Erie, to being shot point blank in Butler, to accidentally starting the French and Indian War in Jumonville Glen, would look vivid and stark — that they would show a man on his way to greatness despite failures along the way.
But after seeing the new film, Young Washington, and standing on the hollowed grounds of a meadow tucked away in the dense, green ridges of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, it is difficult to comprehend why it took so long for this story to be told.
It’s Salena, so of course, read the whole thing.
WHO DOESN’T NEED MORE BATTERIES? Duracell x Messi Limited Edition Coppertop AAA Alkaline Batteries. #CommissionEarned
GHOST RIDERS IN THE (MASSACHUSETTS) SKY: Deep-dive data analysis by Open the Books of Medicaid-funded transportation of beneficiaries to medical services finds thousands of such rides took nobody anywhere, except taxpayers to the cleaners.
