November 16, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MY LATEST SUBSTACK: Ongoing Maintenance — for my body, that is. “At any rate, the biggest lesson here is just that you shouldn’t explain away symptoms. In particular, blaming things on “old age,” though undoubtedly right sometimes, is something you should do after ruling out other problems, not as an excuse not to go to the doctor.”

Plus, my “beautiful veins.”

Posted at 6:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds

KASH PATEL DROPS COVID ORIGIN BOMBSHELL:

Patel reminded Beck that the team briefed Trump based on the intelligence they had. Trump listened, weighed the facts, and acted. Then the usual suspects stepped in: “Then enter Fauci and the media. ‘No, no, no. The Chinese would never do this. It’s not about… No, no, it didn’t come from that.’ Then the wet bat thing came out and some other goofy whatever.”

We all remember what went down. Fauci played the patronizing scientist. The legacy media enforced the talking points. Big Tech censored any dissent. The establishment insisted the virus emerged from some Wuhan wet market and treated anyone who questioned that tale like a threat to democracy.

Patel then pointed out the bombshell that dropped just weeks ago. According to him, former CIA Director Gina Haspel “authorized six case officers and intelligence analysts to be paid off so that they would change their assessment on COVID originations.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

STRIKE A POSE, THERE’S NOTHING TO IT:

Morello knows he can wear a t-shirt that says “Destroy American Fascism” safe in the knowledge that no harm will come to him or his estimated 40 million dollar net worth. He also knows that wouldn’t be the case if someone was attacking his heroes: Tom Morello Defends Fidel Castro: ‘Huge Hero Throughout the Third World.’

—Rolling Stone, November 27th, 2016.

Obligatory: Every GOP president since Coolidge has been called a Nazi or fascist by the left.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

GAZPACHO POLICE FIRE UP THE SPACE LASERS: Trump Lowers the Boom on MTG: Sometimes, You’ve Gotta Police the Crazies.

If she wasn’t “sincerely” motivated by crass personal ambition, she might’ve been tempted by the bright lights of mainstream media acceptance. [Marjorie Taylor Greene] certainly wouldn’t be the first “committed conservative” to go native in the D.C. jungle. It’s surprisingly easy, too: All you’ve gotta do is plunge a dagger in the backs of your friends and colleagues, and whammo, you’re in the club.

And besides, it’s good for an ambitious gal such as Marjorie to keep her options open: You never know when a guest-hosting gig will open on “The View.”

But whereas MTG will do whatever’s good for MTG, President Trump’s focus must be bigger than the ego of any one congresswoman. One hopes that his Truth Social post will serve as a shot across the bow, dissuading other Me-Firsters who’ve been masquerading as America-Firsters.

Still though, it’s been quite a ride for MTG recently, as she maps out her future on The View or MSNBC MS NOW.

UPDATE: MTG also auditioning for CNN? ‘I’m Sorry:’ Marjorie Taylor Greene Apologizes When Confronted By CNN’s Dana Bash About Political Rhetoric.

She’s also going back to the future by looking for “a new way forward:”

UPDATE (6:20 PM): I’m not sure if this counts as MTG flunking her CNN audition:

It wouldn’t be the first time that CNN promoted a white nationalist: Jake Tapper slammed for giving white nationalist Richard Spencer airtime during his program.

Posted at 6:20 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CURIOUS LIMITS OF AIRSTRIP ONE’S SURVEILLANCE STATE:

Recent research estimated there were nearly one million private and publicly-owned CCTV cameras in London alone. That’s one camera for every 10 people, or 1,500 cameras per square mile. Walk between the tube stop and the office, stop by a coffee shop, or go out and get your lunch, and it’s estimated that your image may be captured hundreds of times. Outside China, the UK has become one of the most watched countries per capita on earth.

Despite the proliferation of cameras, the UK authorities are certainly willing to look away from their monitor screens from time to time:

Details of the above image here: Kidlington fly-tipping: Criminals dump mountain of waste in field.

Posted at 5:23 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 4:16 pm by Stephen Green

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Let’s Be Alone And Unhappy.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly:

Researchers at Stanford have finally given a name to something many women have been dealing with for years. It’s called mankeeping. And it’s helping explain why so many women are stepping away from dating altogether.

Yes, from the pages of Vice, it’s a men-are-the-problem-and-therefore-unnecessary article. Because we haven’t had one of those in weeks.

Mankeeping describes the emotional labour women end up doing in heterosexual relationships.

Lesbian relationships being entirely free of aggravation and disappointment, you see. With rates of failure and divorce twice that of heterosexuals, more than double that of gay male couples, and with high rates of alcoholism and spousal abuse. What one might infer from that, I leave to others.

[Mankeeping] goes beyond remembering birthdays or coordinating social plans. It means being your partner’s one-man support system. Managing his stress.

And,

Interpreting his moods.

At which point, readers may wish to share their favourite joke about female indirectness and the two dozen possible meanings of the words “I’m fine” when uttered by a woman, depending on the precise intonation and the current alignment of the planets.

Readers may also note the replacement of a once common but now seemingly unfashionable grievance – ‘Men don’t express their feelings’ – with one of a much more modish kind – ‘Men are expressing their feelings and it’s exhausting and unfair.’

As Timothy P. Carney concluded in August at the Washington Examiner, when the Gray Lady had learned a new word, “Unpaid emotional labor is intolerable for the modern feminist. It’s also known as loving one another, which sounds a little too much like the stuff Jesus used to talk about. Jesus, marriage, commitment? That’s the patriarchy, after all.”

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS. MAMDANI WILL REALLY GET THEM PUMPED UP: Commercial foreclosures on the rise in New York City.

Commercial foreclosures are up in New York City, according to a new report.

Through the third quarter, lenders have initiated foreclosures on 61 commercial properties in New York City, according to data from PropertyShark. At this point in 2024, 55 new foreclosures had been filed.

The rise in foreclosures comes after a short-lived dip. The total number of new cases in New York City decreased from 90 new filings in 2023 to 72 in 2024.

In Q3, New York City saw 21 new commercial foreclosures, a PropertyShark report found.

Brooklyn has seen more foreclosures than the rest of New York City’s boroughs combined, according to the report. Properties in

Brooklyn accounted for 12 of the 21 foreclosure cases this past quarter. Of the 223 commercial foreclosures initiated since 2023, 155 of those cases were filed in Brooklyn, including 41 filings this year thus far.

On the West Coast, the San Jose Mercury News reports: Oakland office building is foreclosed in fresh sign of market maladies.

A growing number of commercial properties, including office buildings, hotels and residential towers in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville, are undergoing financial stress to one degree or another in a difficult real estate market.

In some instances, the properties have suffered loan defaults that have led to foreclosures. In other instances, the commercial real estate sites have suffered a steep decline in value.

But ultimately, I’m sure it will all be fine: Fannie Mae is removing minimum credit score requirements. “This shift impacts first-time homebuyers, credit-invisible buyers, and realtors helping clients navigate mortgage requirements. And yes,  it could open the doors to homeownership for thousands of people who previously couldn’t qualify.”

All the new homeowners will balance out the commercial real estate foreclosures, right? Right?!

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SURPRISE! Here’s Where Your Taxes to Help ‘Homeless People’ Actually Go.

Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, and L.A. all bought into the plan and the money flowed. In 2016, many states, including California, went with “housing first” models — throwing out sobriety requirements to get better — and it’s now worse than ever.

These activists have created a kind of fraudulent nobility that comes with cooping up addicts in apartments and calling it “housing justice.”

Worse, decriminalizing drugs and setting up “safe” places to shoot up drugs gave birth to homeless tourism.

California, Oregon, Hawaii, and New York have attracted 40% (and probably more) of all “homeless” addicts.

Discovery Institute and the Capital Research Center have released their dual report on how extremist groups have used homeless funding for their own political aims. It’s called “INFILTRATED: The Ideological Capture of Homeless Advocacy.”

“Using financial data, legal records, and original research, the report uncovers a vast network of homelessness advocates that spend billions in taxpayer dollars and philanthropic grants on everything but obvious solutions,” the report states.  Indeed, the obvious issues leading to homelessness, namely drug addictions and mental health problems, aren’t addressed in the massive expenditures by these organizations and, in effect, worsen the homeless problem even more.

In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

In 2023, CNN joined in on the fun: California has spent billions to fight homelessness. The problem has gotten worse.

Also that year, Fox News neatly summed up the Bay Area’s woes: Gavin Newsom’s 10-year plan to end San Francisco homelessness marks 20-year anniversary.

Of course, the problem isn’t exclusive to the west coast. In 2017 the New York Post similarly reported: Why homelessness gets worse as de Blasio doubles spending.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

I’M PRETTY SURE THE BARBARIANS ARE ALREADY HERE. Niall Ferguson: If humans stop reading, barbarians will live among us again.

If we gradually cease to base our social and political organisation on the written word, it follows that there will be three consequences.

First, we shall quickly be cut off from the heritage of all the great civilisations, as books are the principal repository of past thought. Books are the principal way a civilised person learns about the distinction between noble and ignoble conduct, for example. This means that the next generation will have a significantly larger proportion of outright barbarians than any in the past century.

Second, we shall revert to the preliterary conflation of present and past, history and myth, individual and collective. The essence of the conspiracy theory is that it preys on the illiterate mind.

Third, we shall quickly lose the ability to think analytically, because the crucial way our civilisation has been transmitted from generation to generation is through the great writers, from whom we learn how to structure an argument so that it is clearly intelligible to others.

Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 offered a vision of a bookless, authoritarian future. But the more I think about where we’re going, the more I realise that the loss of literacy will amount to going back in time rather than forward.

It’s easy to blame the smartphone, which has radically transformed how millions receive information. (The death of the Internet forum is but one of many examples.) But it should share the blame with other powerful forces. Flashback: How Journalists Became Fahrenheit 451–Style ‘Firemen.’ “Not too long ago, ambitious journalists, local and national, prided themselves on gathering information, and their editors prided themselves on publishing it. About 50 or so years ago, however, progressives started to seize control of universities, J-schools included, and newsrooms shifted leftwards with each new graduating class. By 2016, even major newsrooms had become firehouses. Their goal was not to report information but to manage it.”

As Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs on “Kindergarteners with Chromebooks.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

UK GOVERNMENT ‘WITHHOLDING DATA THAT MAY LINK COVID JAB TO EXCESS DEATHS:’

The public health watchdog has been accused of a “cover-up” after refusing to publish data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) argued that releasing the data would lead to the “distress or anger” of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.

Public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died.
Last year, a cross-party group expressed alarm about “growing public and professional concerns” over the UK’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.

In a letter to UKHSA and Department for Health, the MPs and peers said that potentially critical data – which map the date of people’s Covid vaccine doses to the date of their deaths – had been released to pharmaceutical companies but not put into the public domain. The public health watchdog has been accused of a “cover-up” after refusing to publish data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) argued that releasing the data would lead to the “distress or anger” of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.

Public health officials also argued that publishing the data risked damaging the well-being and mental health of the families and friends of people who died.
Last year, a cross-party group expressed alarm about “growing public and professional concerns” over the UK’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.

In a letter to UKHSA and Department for Health, the MPs and peers said that potentially critical data – which map the date of people’s Covid vaccine doses to the date of their deaths – had been released to pharmaceutical companies but not put into the public domain.

Why, it’s as if:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll