REAL PROGRESS IN FIXING SSA: Biden era Social Security Administration Commissioner Peter O’Malley said that agency was “on the brink of collapse,” and a recent Inspector-General report pointed to dozens of unimplemented reforms that if implemented would save an estimated $4.9 billion.

The truth about SSA provides a much more encouraging portrait of the state of management of the federal agency that runs the biggest entitlement program in America, as I report today on The Washington Stand.

In fact, SSA under Commissioner Frank Bisignano is moving quickly to act on the dozens of outstanding recommendations, even as great progress is being made in shortening wait times for customers calling the agency and eliminating backlogged disability applications.

THIS MONTH, FREE IRAN. NEXT MONTH, FREE CUBA:

Related:

REPORT: Iranian F-14 fleet attacked at a base in central Iran believed to host all the remaining F-14s in Iranian service.

Early in the morning on Mar. 8, 2026, the IDF announced that Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcats at the 8th Tactical Fighter Base in Isfahan (or Esfahan), in central Iran, home to the 81st, 82nd and 83rd Tactical Fighter Squadrons, had been obliterated in an air strike part of the Operation Roaring Lion.

* * * * * * * *

However, the latest attack is something different: the 8th Tactical Fighter Base, which was also targeted last year, is believed to host all the remaining F-14s in Iranian service, meaning no Tomcat (or very few, maybe hidden in some underground facility) may have survived anywhere in the world.

Well, only in museums:

GEOENGINEERING: The audacious plan to refill the Great Salt Lake. “No terminal saline lake — the term for a lake in which water flows to a basin with no exit and accumulates salt and other minerals — has ever been fully restored. And right now, the region has a dismal snowpack, which could again drive the water level to near record lows in the fall.”

Pipeline to the Pacific, baby.

FILE THIS UNDER “NO SH*T, SHERLOCK”: The shift towards socialism similarly mirrors the Democratic party’s leftward shift, but a deeper look reveals that those favoring “socialism” have no understanding of what it actually means. Just The News reported that:

“The shifting sentiment towards socialism may not necessarily reflect fuzzy feelings for its ideals, but rather a lack of understanding of what those ideals are, according to professor of political science, Nicholas Giordano. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation. People are gravitating toward socialism because they’ve never really been taught what socialism is,” Giordano told Just The News.

 

 

OH NO, SOMETHING NEW TO “INFURIATE LIBERALS!” Gwen Stefani’s ‘Maga Barbie’ transformation has infuriated liberals.

Thirty years ago, an edgy new pop star looked set to take over the world. With her peroxide blonde hair, camo trousers and rebellious spirit, No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani seemed like a breath of cigarette-smoke-tinged air: cooler and sexier than Britney Spears, but not quite as chaotic as Courtney Love; an artist who appealed to both rock and pop fans.

No Doubt’s third album, Tragic Kingdom (1995), sold more than 16 million copies, earned the band two Grammy nominations (for best new artist and best rock album) and spawned the colossal hit single Don’t Speak. Stefani’s decision to go solo in 2004 catapulted her to the A-list, with number one singles, sold-out tours and countless magazine front covers. She was the US’s favourite cool girl, whose empowering songs formed the soundtrack of millennial adolescence. Until she wasn’t. Two decades later, Stefani has found herself with a very different identifier: enemy of liberals everywhere.

Leftists with far too much time on their hands spent Trump’s first term trying to decode hidden Nazi symbolism out of everything Taylor Swift did, until moving on to Sydney Sweeney last year, and now I guess it’s Stefani’s time in the barrel. But as the London Telegraph concludes, “One imagines Stefani isn’t too bothered by the drama. She has a net worth of $160m (£120m), a secure marriage and three healthy children. In May, No Doubt will begin their summer-long residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas, following in the footsteps of U2, the Eagles and the Backstreet Boys, after netting $10m to reunite at Coachella in 2024.”

WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL! NY Times Discovers Woodrow Wilson’s Racism to Smear Trump; Defended Him in 2010.

New talking points ahoy! The liberal New York Times now condemns former Democratic and “progressive” President Woodrow Wilson, founding father of the modern-day liberal state, for his deep racism and segregationist policies he pushed as president of Princeton University and president of the United States from 1913-1921.

But that permission applies only to woke Democrats and reporters using Wilson to smear President Trump — no credit is given to conservatives for initially pushing the anti-Wilson argument into the mainstream. In fact, the paper mocked conservatives for speaking that truth, including in an infamous New York Times symposium reacting to Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book Liberal Fascism and his thoroughly researched condemnation of the racist Wilson.

White House correspondent Erica Green unloaded her hysterical 1,800-word hit job in Thursday’s paper under the headline “Trump Says He Is the ‘Least Racist’ President. But His Term Echoes a Grim Past.”

As Byron York wrote on September 24th of 2008, “Today is a red-letter day for the New York Times. For the first time, the paper has reported in its news section that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once uttered the phrase ‘God damn America.’”

It took the Times a year to “break” the story of Andrew Cuomo hiding the Covid death toll in nursing homes after the Daily Caller initially reported it in May of 2020, and Scott Bessent rhetorically asked Timesman Andrew Sorkin in December, “You had what was one of the greatest scandals of all time… Joe Biden’s diminished capacity and the cover-up. Where was the New York Times?” 

But of course, we know the answer to that:


No word yet if David Frum will re-reversing his opinion on Wilson now that the 28th president been finally rendered doubleplus ungood by the Gray Lady: “Frum’s article, ‘Uncancel Woodrow Wilson,’ appears in the March 2024 issue of the Atlantic. How perverse a choice is it to write on this now?” Particularly so when Frum himself correctly noted in 2013 that “Wilson was also the most disdainful racist to hold the presidency since Andrew Johnson in the 1860s.”

Flashback: The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson. “I come now not to explain Wilson, but to hate him. A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.”

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Politico founder plots new Washington newspaper war.

One of Washington, DC’s biggest media investors plans to revive one of the US capital’s great historic rivalries with a direct attack on the limping Washington Post.

Robert Allbritton, who founded Politico and NOTUS and whose father owned the Post rival Washington Star, has discussed taking advantage of the Post’s large-scale layoffs and damaged brand by significantly expanding NOTUS, a public-spirited and education-oriented source of government coverage, into a full-scale news operation, potentially even under a different name, three people with direct knowledge of the conversations said.

NOTUS Media in February filed an application to trademark a new name — The Washington Sun — according to filings.

The Politico founder and NOTUS editor-in-chief Tim Grieve have aggressively privately pursued many of the top remaining names at the Post, hoping to peel off a significant number of top journalists to help the publication become an immediate player in DC.

Allbritton and Grieve have approached senior congressional correspondent Paul Kane, White House bureau chief Matt Viser, chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein, tech reporter Drew Harwell, White House reporter Dan Diamond, and columnist Carolyn Hax, among others.

The publication could replicate some of the success of Politico by launching an events and pricey subscription business. The DC billionaire — his family owned and sold Riggs Bank and WJLA, as well as selling Politico for about $1 billion to Axel Springer in 2021 — has told people that he is willing to invest a significant amount of money on the venture for years in order to stand up the publication.

As for Germany’s Axel Springer, besides owning America’s left-leaning Politico and Business Insider, they’ve just acquired the nominally center-right London Telegraph: Axel Springer Will Buy The Publisher Of UK’s Daily Telegraph For $766 Million.

ROGER KIMBALL: Unconditional Surrender: When Wars Are Fought to Win.

“There are decades where nothing happens,” Vladimir Lenin is supposed to have said (but didn’t), “and there are weeks where decades happen.” Welcome to the beginning of March, Anno Domini 2026.

One week ago, on February 28, the United States and Israel commenced an attack on Iran. At first, it seemed to be merely a ramped-up continuation of Operation Midnight Hammer, the raid conducted last June when the United States, following up on Israel’s preliminary attacks, destroyed (“completely and totally obliterated”) three key nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. It was an extraordinary operation, in which four B-2 bombers, having flown for 30 hours from the United States, mounted an astonishing precision strike with fourteen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, together with submarine-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles.

But Midnight Hammer was merely a preliminary salvo compared to Epic Fury, the pulverizing assault that the United States and Israel (under the name “Roaring Lion”) launched last Saturday. The world has not seen anything like this since 1945, when the United States and its allies crushed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Having learned from the aftermath of the Great War that armistice is often but another name for false victory, President Trump adopted as his motto the phrase that definitively ended World War II: “unconditional surrender.”

In the meantime though: Iran Has a New Supreme Leader, but They Won’t Tell Us Who It Is.

Unexpectedly:

 

TRIBAL SOCIETIES UNDERSTAND TRIBAL WARS BETTER THAN “CIVILIZED” ONES DO:

IT’S NOT A JOKE, IT’S OPEN, DELIBERATE PROPAGANDA:

Related:

IT’S GOOD TO SINK THE ENEMY DURING A WAR:

LIFE AMONG THE LAPTOP CLASS: