Archive for 2025

October 25, 2025

NELLIE BOWLES: My Little Totenkopf.

Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat challenging Susan Collins for her Senate seat, found himself in some trouble this week because of an old tattoo. A tramp stamp? An ex’s name on his bicep? No, it was a large totenkopf on his chest, the Nazi skull symbol worn by guards at concentration camps. Platner claims that he picked the symbol at random from the tattoo parlor’s wall with his Marine buddies (I hate when that happens!) and had no idea that there were any Nazi implications. Which is funny because according to an old acquaintance of his, there was nothing random or secret about it at all, and he would call it his totenkopf: “He said, ‘Oh, this is my totenkopf,’ ” the acquaintance told Jewish Insider. “He said it in a cutesy little way.” Platner, who described himself as “a communist” and an “antifa supersoldier” back in his old Reddit posting days, also apparently spent time in “a socialist paramilitary group.”

The best part is that the left has now painted itself into a corner with Nazi iconography, because they can no longer quite articulate why it’s bad, since killing Jews is neutral to admirable. Here’s a popular leftist commentator trying to explain why Platner’s Nazi symbol is bad:

“This isn’t just a Nazi tattoo, this is the symbol of the concentration camp guards, the guys who ran the death camps. The men who murdered socialists, communists, and liberals. They mass-murdered all black men in the French army. This is on par with a swastika.” (The commentator deleted it so I won’t name and shame. But isn’t it interesting?)

Perhaps that explains why at least one poll believes the severity of Platner’s “My Little Totenkopf” can by dismissed away as merely an “anti-Israel tattoo:”

An anti-Israel tattoo? The majority of the left in 2025 would see that phrase and think: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL:

Posted at 9:48 am by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 25th, 2025

IT’S ONLY “DEMOCRACY” WHEN THE LEFT GETS WHAT IT WANTS:

Posted at 8:46 am by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 25th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE ICE FLOE: Police Report Reveals Democrat DC Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton Has “Early Stages of Dementia.”

A new police report reveals Democrat DC Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has “early stages of dementia.”

Eleanor Holmes Norton, 88, is a nonvoting congressional representative for DC. She has represented DC since 1991.

According to two police reports obtained by NBC Washington, Eleanor Holmes Norton was scammed by people claiming to be duct and fireplace cleaners.

The thieves posing as HVAC workers entered Holmes Norton’s home, accessed her credit cards and charged her $4,400 for work they did not do.

The police report described Eleanor Holmes Norton as having dementia. It also revealed that her caretaker has power of attorney.

“Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC) 88 years old, Black Woman, suffers early stages of dementia,” the police report said.

A spokeswoman for Eleanor Holmes Norton pushed back on the claims in the police report.

Flashback: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics. “The next time a Democratic politician makes an anonymous observation about the age or vigor of a colleague with whom they disagree, be skeptical. The remarks are made to reporters as if in sorrow, but the message is about as subtle as a shiv in the prison yard.”

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: CPS security guard sexually assaulted students in her home while her husband was dying: prosecutors. “A former Chicago Public Schools security guard is charged with sexually assaulting two female students in her home while her husband was dying of colon cancer, prosecutors said. Heather Pancer, 48, of Hammond, Indiana, worked as a security guard at George Washington High School near the state line when the assaults occurred between 2018 and 2020, Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara said during a detention hearing.”

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 25th, 2025

UNEXPECTEDLY! Maine Democrat With Nazi Tattoo Also Made Homophobic Social Media Posts, Report Finds.

“The unearthed posts show a pattern of homophobic language and rhetoric that mocked or demeaned LGBTQ+ people,” the Advocate reported Wednesday. “In some cases, Platner appeared to use slurs casually in discussions unrelated to sexuality; in others, he explicitly framed gay people as the punch line.”

In 2021, Platner posted, “I like how our gay antics make him so uncomfortable he hates us. I’m doubling down on gay chicken next time in honor of this Air Force pussy.” A year earlier, he wrote, “This was the gayest (not in the fun dick sucking way) thing I’ve ever seen. This dude is literally everything I hate all rolled into one.” In other posts, he taunted users to “back it up with facts, fags,” and mocked military officers as “gay.”

Platner confirmed and apologized to the Advocate for what he now calls his “indefensible” anti-gay remarks, which he posted between 2016 and 2021. “I made a lot of comments over the years and talked a lot of shit on the internet,” Platner told the LGBT news site in an interview. “I stopped using that specific kind of language a while ago … and today I find that stuff abhorrent. And I am sorry that I ever used it.”

At Hot Air, John Sexton, quoting from Jewish Insider and CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski goes out on a limb: Platner Knew About the Nazi Tattoo.

I don’t think he’s a secret Nazi. I do think he’s a liar who made up a story about not knowing what this was because it was easier than trying to explain himself to a bunch of left-wing partisans who were already headed for the fainting couch over his previous comments.

Even MSNBC is having a hard time supporting him.

Bottom line: Even if one accepts Platner’s apologies for his past behavior, believes his account of when he learned about the meaning of his tattoo, and thinks that he may have evolved from his past errors, it’s clear that he has a questionable track record. There are legitimate reasons to be suspicious of how deeply held his current progressive beliefs are, and how disciplined he would be as a politician.

He’s a confirmed liar as of this week, not four years ago. I guess we’ll see if that matters to Maine voters.

MSNBC may be distancing themselves from Platner, but Vox founder Matt Yglesias is “ride or die” for the man with the Totenkopf:

At least, he says he is:

Perhaps Yglesias wants “a fiesty left-populist outsider” after the way the WaPo profiled him a couple of years ago as a boring old establishment leftist: “The boring journey of Matt Yglesias:”

“I don’t always agree with Matt, but he always makes you think with his unique and sharp insights,” says Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, via email. Klain has liked and shared multiple Yglesias tweets, usually ones that praise White House actions in defiance of wailing liberals or henpecking conservatives. Yglesias, Klain adds, “offers ‘unconventional wisdom:’ He’s not afraid to break with others and put his views out there — a perspective that is hard to find in a dialogue dominated by conventional wisdom.”

* * * * * * * *

But enough serious people take Yglesias seriously to negate the many people who don’t. His Substack was tied for most-followed newsletter by members of the Biden transition team, according to digital strategist Rob Blackie, and Yglesias himself was No. 4 on the list of most-followed journalists. Some of Yglesias’s posts on policy — particularly one on Build Back Better negotiations in February — have reportedly circulated among White House staff.

“There’s a broad sense that he’s a public intellectual, and they take his ideas like they’ll take other ideas,” says a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss outside influences on the administration. “He’s not super influential, but he’s a prominent normie liberal, just like Joe Biden is a normie liberal.”

Or perhaps he just likes the look of Platner in a Hugo Boss suit:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025

October 24, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 24th, 2025

I USED TO THINK THE BULWARK WAS JUST STUPID, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY KIND OF EVIL:

Posted at 7:53 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 24th, 2025

AWS OUTAGE REMINDS US WHY $2,449 INTERNET-DEPENDENT BEDS ARE A BAD IDEA:

[T]he AWS outage caused smart mattress covers from Eight Sleep to malfunction. These “Pod” mattress covers connect to a physical hub, and users can set the covers to temperatures between 55° and 110° Fahrenheit via a companion app. Eight Sleep also sells smart mattress bases that let people control their bed’s elevation with the app. As of this writing, the Pods’ MSRPs range from $2,449 to $3,249, and the base has a $1,950 MSRP. Eight Sleep also sells its Autopilot feature through an annual subscription that starts at $199. Autopilot is supposed to help automatically set Eight Sleep devices to users’ optimal sleeping conditions. Pod purchases require a one-year subscription to Autopilot.

Pods have on-device buttons for controlling the temperature without a phone, but the devices require an Internet connection for the adjustments to work. That limitation led to disturbing wake-up calls during the AWS outage as Eight Sleep smart beds became uncontrollable.

As one user on Reddit said:

I woke up too hot in the middle of the night last night and kept double-tapping like a maniac to adjust the temp[erature] down since I wasn’t getting any haptic feedback. I only found out why after I got up in the morning.

It would be somewhat understandable that Autopilot stops working because Eight Sleep’s backend is down but not being able to even adjust the temperature locally is ridiculous and completely unacceptable for such a high-end (and expensive) product.

A person on X wrote: “Would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position due to an AWS outage. Cmon now.”

I do not trust the Internet of things, to coin an Instaphrase.

(Via James Lileks, who asks, “Is it Hot in Here, Or is the Internet Down?”)

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 24th, 2025
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »