RIP: Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97.

HULK HOGAN SHOULD BE REMEMBERED FOR PILEDRIVING GAWKER MEDIA INTO THE GROUND:

In 2012, [Gawker editor A. J. Daulerio] posted a video to Gawker of Hogan having sex with the estranged wife of a friend. (The video was filmed secretly and was delivered to Gawker, again, only after a failed blackmail attempt on Hogan.) Hogan sent a cease-and-desist letter to Gawker, but owner Nick Denton refused to have it taken down, arguing that the comments Daulerio made underneath it mocking Hogan gave it “news value,” despite its otherwise being a fairly clear-cut case of invasion of privacy. Hogan, then near bankruptcy, lacked the ability to pursue what would have inevitably been a monumentally expensive case against the Gawker Media empire.

That is, until billionaire Peter Thiel quietly stepped into the picture. The PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley CEO had been outed as gay by Gawker several years prior to this — the only reason proffered by Gawker and its defenders at the time was that he had demonstrated right-wing proclivities — and he had never forgiven them for the invasion of his privacy. While Thiel had little hope of legal recourse in his own situation — he was, in fact, gay, so he had no grounds for a defamation suit — he recognized immediately that the humiliating invasion of privacy Hogan had suffered (and was continuing to suffer) was a very different, and much stronger, case.

So Thiel went to Hogan with a proposition: If Hogan wanted to sue, he would cover all of his legal expenses — to the tune of what turned out to be over $10 million — so long as Hogan promised never to settle the case. They were going to take this one all the way to court and to a jury verdict, win or lose, come hell or high water.

You probably know what happened next: They won. The trial was a pig circus for the ages, with Daulerio destroying Gawker forever by announcing, during a videotaped deposition, that he would publish the sex tape of anyone unless they were a child under the age of four. When the jury finally handed down its verdict in June 2016, it awarded Hogan a whopping $140 million in cumulative damages. The jury award ended Gawker Media almost instantly. (They filed for bankruptcy in June and were sold for scrap in August.)

John Sexton adds, “For the leftist media it was a major setback (though obviously not a lasting defeat). A kind of ruthless cruelty they had not-so-secretly admired and hoped to adopt more widely for use against their political enemies got blown away. Since then they’ve had to rein in some of their worst instincts for fear of a similar end. For me, that’s Hulk Hogan’s greatest legacy.”

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Nigel Farage explodes as DWP posts £23.5k ‘Shariah law administrator’ job ad.

Nigel Farage has erupted over a job advert on the Government website for a ‘Shariah Law Administrator.’ The job advert was shared by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as a company called Manchester Community Centre seeks a legal assistant with a specialist knowledge of sharia law to help the area’s Muslim population.

With an annual salary of £23,500 the successful candidate is required to conduct interviews with individuals and families to assess and review their requirements as well as provide information and support to clients and admin work for Manchester Shariah Council, a local community charity. The Reform UK leader took issue with the advert, claiming that the country was being “destroyed”. He said: “Our country and its values are being destroyed,” on a post on X followed by a screenshot of the advert.

Political commentator Bella Wallersteiner said: “Sharia law has no place in this country. We’re a sovereign nation with one legal system – English law. It should be banned.”

Reform Westminster City Councillor for Lancaster Gate, Laila Cunningham added: “This is a government-funded job, paid for by British taxpayers to promote Sharia law on our soil. It’s disgusting.

“It undermines our country, our laws, and everything we stand for. One British law, no exceptions, no appeasement.”

One person responded to her post: “This is not a government-funded job and you know that fine well. This is a job on a forum hosted by DWP but advertising on behalf of a sharia council – a private charity.

“These councils are legally bound by British law which, again, you know fine well.”

How has that been working out over the last twenty years? As Rod Dreher’s “Law of Merited Impossibility” states: “‘It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.’”

JAY LENO CRITICIZES MODERN LATE-NIGHT COMEDY FOR ALIENATING HALF THE AUDIENCE WITH PARTISAN POLITICS:

Jay Leno reflected on why he always kept his jokes politically balanced while hosting “The Tonight Show” for over two decades.

The 75-year-old comedian recently sat down for an interview with David Trulio, the president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, during which he was questioned about his approach to political humor.

“I read that there was an analysis done of your work on ‘The Tonight Show’ for the 22 years and that your jokes were roughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats. Did you have a strategy?” Trulio asked.

“It was fun to me when I got hate letters [like] ‘Dear Mr. Leno, you and your Republican friends’ and ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ — over the same joke,” Leno recalled.

‘And I go, ’Well, that’s good,'” he said. “That’s how you get a whole audience.”

Leno went on to note how late-night comedy has changed amid the current divisive political landscape.

“Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have [to] give your opinion,” Leno said.

20 years ago at least, like Johnny Carson before him, Jay was a traditional Hollywood establishment Democrat:

Leno says, “I’m not conservative. I’ve never voted that way in my life.” He “really worries” what a Dubya victory in November will do to the makeup of the Supreme Court. He believes “the wool was pulled over our eyes” with the Iraq war. He thinks the White House began using terrorism “as a crutch” after 9/11. He feels that during the campaign Kerry should “make Bush look as stupid as possible.” He believes “the media is in the pocket of the government, and they don’t do their job” so “you have people like Michael Moore who do it for them.” He has on his joke-writing staff a number of former professional speechwriters for Democratic candidates. “No Republicans.” When it comes to Bush, he doesn’t think his politics are much different from Letterman’s. “Does he show his dislike maybe a little more than I do? Probably.”

In September of 2016, Leno was quoted by the Hollywood Reporter as saying:  Trump Needs “The Crap Beat Out of Him Just Once:”

Sitting in the Mercedes-Benz Lounge at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance last month, Leno, leaning on his self-deprecating humor that captivated decades of NBC viewers, singled out Trump. “I think this is the problem with Donald Trump. I don’t think anybody has just ever beaten the crap out of him, so he has this attitude of ‘whatever.’ When you have the crap beat out of you, you learn how to negotiate, you learn how to deal with people,” Leno explains. “You learn that kindness is the greatest virtue you can have.”

I’d say that after all of the lawfare, multiple impeachment attempts – and assassination attempts – Jay’s fellow kind and tolerant Democrats have more than beat the crap out of Trump. But give Leno points for not his iteration of the Tonight Show as a leftist bully pulpit while on the air:

(Scroll to the 8:17 mark if the video doesn’t auto-play beginning there.)

In sharp contrast: Colbert’s left-wing ‘Late Show’ became ‘therapy’ session for liberals: study.

Embattled funnyman Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” became a “therapy” session for the left — and it’s no surprise viewers took notice, a new study found.

Since 2022, Colbert has hosted 176 left-leaning guests and only one Republican on soon-to-be cancelled “The Late Show,” according to a study by media watchdog NewsBusters — a staggering imbalance that has tracked with his 2025 guest list.

In just the first six months of this year, the show booked 43 left-leaning political guests — and zero conservatives — leading all late-night programs in partisan tilt.

“Colbert’s show has been late-night group therapy for liberals,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told The Post. “Americans have continually shown they no longer have the time or patience for such partisan sneering masquerading as comedy.”

Fellow Democrat Connie Chung is melting down that the Paramount Skydance merger forecasts “the end of CBS as I knew it.” But it’s actually much more than that: Canceling Colbert Begins the End of Television.

RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: Inside socialist Zohran Mamdani’s posh wedding bash at secluded Uganda compound — complete with phone jamming system, armed guards.

Socialist NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani celebrated his recent nuptials with a lavish, three-day affair at his family’s ritzy, secluded Ugandan compound — complete with masked security guards and a cellphone jamming system, The Post has learned.

* * * * * * * *

He told his social media followers Sunday he was heading to his homeland to celebrate with his wealthy filmmaker mom and professor dad, who own the Buziga Hill property.

The neighborhood is home to some of Uganda’s richest, including billionaire businessman Godfrey Kirumira, a city tycoon with stakes in real estate, tourism, petroleum and infrastructure, and houses neighboring the Mamdanis easily fetch more than $1 million.*

* * * * * * * *

Security was extremely tight, sources said.

“Outside the Mamdani house were more than 20 special forces command unit guards, some in masks, and there was a phone-jamming system set up — and all for the strictly invite-only Mamdani event,” one witness confirmed to The Post.

“One gate had around nine guards stationed at it,” they added.

Armed men prepared to inflict violence should anyone attempt to interfere with the goings-on in the space they’re patrolling, huh?

And Mamdani’s family can afford the security: ‘Capitalism Is Theft’: I Followed Zohran Mamdani’s Internet Trail.

He comes from a posh family—his mother, award-winning director Mira Nair, sold her Chelsea loft for $1.45 million in 2019—but Mamdani treats wealth itself as a form of theft. “Socialism doesn’t mean stealing money from the rich,” he wrote on X in 2020. “It means taking back money the rich stole from everyone else.” In another post: “Taxation isn’t theft. Capitalism is.”

He hasn’t disavowed those views. When asked on CNN last month whether he liked capitalism, Mamdani smiled. “No, I have many critiques of capitalism,” he said.

But not so much that he’s demanding that mom and dad surrender their posh real estate:

Similarly, I imagine the catering at the wedding was slightly better than this: As Socialist Zohran Mamdani Proposes Government-Owned Supermarkets for NYC, Kansas City’s Subsidized Store Flops: Report.

Mamdani—the frontrunner in New York City’s mayoral election following his upset Democratic primary win over former governor Andrew Cuomo—has campaigned on opening similar supermarkets in the city. While Kansas City merely subsidized KC Sun Fresh, though, New York City would own and operate the stories under Mamdani’s proposal.

The stores, Mamdani says, would help combat “out-of-control” prices by operating “without a profit motive” and passing savings on to consumers.

According to the Post, customers have become “increasingly afraid” to shop in the Kansas City store even with police presence “because of drug dealing, theft and vagrancy both inside and outside the store and the public library across the street.”

“Sales were okay at first, but after the pandemic, crime rose and sales began to plummet,” the Post‘s report reads. “Police data show assaults, robberies and shoplifting in the immediate vicinity have been on an upward trend since 2020. Shoplifting cases have nearly tripled.”

Don’t worry, I’m sure it will all workout fine in New York though.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ROGER KIMBALL: History’s Hard Lessons and America’s New Resolve.

Years back, Teacher’s Scotch ran a clever ad campaign on city buses. “In life, experience is the great teacher,” the ads read, “in Scotch, Teacher’s is the great experience.” Perhaps the second assertion is true; I’ll find out one of these days. But the first is certainly not true. Eisenhower hoped it might be, but here in London, anti-Semitism is alive and well, despite what Laplace once described as expériences nombreuses et funestes.

Of course, anti-Semitism is alive and well in the United States, too. But I suspect there is this difference. In the United States, virulent anti-Semitism is largely an elite phenomenon. It thrives in the Petri dishes of swank colleges and universities and a handful of cities. That’s where you see the Palestinian flags and shouts of “globalize the intifada.” (It is also, I am happy to say, where the Trump administration’s battle against anti-Semitism has enjoyed its most conspicuous victories.)

It’s my sense that in the U.K., the phenomenon is more general. “Why is that?” I asked an English friend. “Because the invasion of Britain by Muslims has proceeded much further here than in the U.S.” That was when Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the Saints came up.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Britain: ‘Shut Up,’ the Government Explained.

An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.

Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.

The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.

It comes amid growing concern that Britain is facing another summer of disorder, as protests outside asylum hotels spread.

On Saturday, crowds gathered in towns and cities including Norwich, Leeds and Bournemouth to demand action, with more protests planned for Sunday.

The Conservative Party’s shadow home secretary has criticized the formation of this “elite” team of eavesdroppers, as well he might, but until the Tories renounce their own Online Safety Act and their approach to online discourse during the pandemic, their credibility in this area is . . .  limited. The rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK can be attributed to a number of causes, but the Tories’ attitude to free speech was one of them.

Pass the Juche on the left-hand side:

JOSH HAMMER: Grading the Second Trump Presidency, Six Months In.

Over the course of four years’ banishment to America’s political wilderness while subjected to both a would-be assassin’s bullets and the humiliating and unprecedented spectacle of criminal prosecution by his political opponents, Donald Trump seems to have intuited a key life lesson: Time is of the essence. Carpe diem, seize the day. And so it has been. Like a thoroughbred bursting out of the Kentucky Derby starting gate, the second Trump administration has been racing full speed ahead ever since Trump was inaugurated once again as president of the United States. If the Derby is the “fastest two minutes in sports,” then this has surely been the fastest six months in modern presidential history.

Awareness of life’s ticking clock is important for any elected official, but it is particularly important for Trump. During his first term in office, much of Trump’s agenda was derailed or sidetracked by forces beyond his direct control: an unexpected John McCain thumbs-down on the Obamacare repeal vote, “nationwide injunction”-happy lower-court judges, subversive administrative state actors, a bogus special counsel probe on Russian election interference, the COVID-19 pandemic, extraordinary Big Tech censorship and more. Based on these experiences and sobered from those long interregnum years, Trump adjusted his game plan this time around. And it shows.

Here, then, is a six-month Trump administration report card.

Faster, please:

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

No One Notices As Entire Cast Of 'The View' Replaced With Shrieking Feral Pigs https://t.co/Vjts4XwTzL pic.twitter.com/VGDSoURCIB

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 24, 2025

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Mayday Mayday Mayday, This Is Hollywood Two-Zero-Two-Five… We Are Going Down…:

This reporter attended the premiere and ambushed several cast members on the red carpet in an attempt to lure them into saying something controversial. Gunn’s brother gleefully took the bait saying “yes, Superman is an immigrant… and if you don’t like that, you’re not American” with a nasty sneer plastered on his mug. Further down the red carpet, this same reporter, grinning mischievously into the camera, baited Nathan Fillion into saying “Somebody needs a hug… it’s just a movie, guys”, by telling the actor that MAGA was furious that this new “Superman” movie had the gall to celebrate immigrants.

And just like that, the damage was done. For the rest of the week leading up to its release, much of the excitement of an imminent blockbuster featuring one of America’s most beloved characters became lost in yet another round of bitter political combat caused primarily by out-of-touch Hollywood elites who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut nor their disdain for Flyover America tucked away in their vests.

On the other hand, compare this sequence of events with a similar one which occurred during an interview with the cast of the final “Mission: Impossible” film earlier this year. Once again, a reporter tried to bait the cast into commenting on American politics, this time with a question about Donald Trump and tariffs. But this time, Tom Cruise looked the reporter in the eye and declared, very simply, “we’d rather answer questions about the movie” in that quiet authoritative tone that has become the hallmark of Cruise the Hollywood elder statesman. The message was clear… we’re not playing that game here today.

It’s remarkable that Cruise, of all people, should have such great instincts for how to sell a movie while deftly avoiding the same rakes that almost everyone else in Hollywood can’t seem to stop stepping on. Remarkable because Cruise the Movie Star first became internationally famous for his portrayal of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a cocky F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot best known for flying by the seat of his pants. “Up there… if you think… you’re dead”, as Maverick describes his philosophy in the original “Top Gun.”

Read the whole thing.

SUELLA BRAVERMAN: These are not extremists. Ordinary British people are being criminalized.

Eight days. That’s how long it took from Hadush Kebatu’s illegal arrival on our shores to his alleged assault of a local teenage girl. This criminal charge has pierced through the political haze, not because it is an anomaly, but because it is no longer rare. The British people are not imagining the chaos. They are living it.

They see it in Canary Wharf where the once-prestigious Britannia Hotel, now rented by the Home Office at eye-watering prices, is being used to house illegal arrivals. The images are not abstract. The anger is not theoretical. The reality is visible from their windows.

In Waterlooville, my own constituency, 35 illegal migrants are earmarked to be placed right in the centre of the shopping centre. Shopkeepers ask how this decision was made. Residents wonder if they were consulted. They weren’t. They never are. Indefensibly, the local Lab/Lib council failed to even respond to the Home Office’s inquiries about the suitability of the location, such is the level of incompetence.

Meanwhile, 1.3 million British citizens sit on housing waiting lists. But when it comes to newly arrived migrants – many of whom have crossed the Channel unlawfully – there are apartments, hotels, hot meals, legal representation and round-the-clock care. The Prime Minister breezily told Parliament this week that “many local authorities have spare housing” for asylum seekers. Has he visited them? Has he walked through the town centres now marred by decay, disorder, and despair?

This is not fringe rhetoric. It is the mainstream voice of Britain. And yet it is silenced, patronised, and, increasingly, criminalised.

Earlier: Lionel Shriver: Now I’ve left Britain, here’s what you look like.

THE REAL JANUARY 6 WASN’T AT THE CAPITOL – IT WAS AT TRUMP TOWER:

January 6 has become a date of hallowed pagan sacredness to the ruling class – a supposed talisman marking chaos, a shorthand for “threats to democracy.” But the media, predictably, has focused on the wrong January. And the wrong threat.

Because the real January 6 – the one that changed everything – wasn’t in 2021. It happened four years earlier, in 2017. Not at the Capitol, but rather in a glass-walled conference room on the 26th floor of Trump Tower.

That morning, President-elect Donald J. Trump received a classified briefing from top intelligence officials – a routine, transitional step for any incoming commander in chief.

But what he got wasn’t intelligence. It was a malicious setup, a trap.

Read the whole thing.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Macron and Candace Deserve Each Other,” Roger Simon writes.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Na Na Na Na, Goodbye! Edition.

HOLY CHOOSING THE WRONG SIDE, BATMAN! Trailer: Warner Brothers reveals Aztec Batman, where evil white Europeans come to destroy the peaceful natives.

In it’s continued quest to viciously deconstruct and murder every comic book IP in their possession, Warner Brothers is bringing you a new spin on your favorite caped crusader, and it looks so bad we have to share it with you so you can laugh at it too.

* * * * * * * *

A new legend rises. AZTEC BATMAN: CLASH OF THE EMPIRES is coming to Digital 9/19. pic.twitter.com/YXn8VTzIng

— Warner Bros. Entertainment (@WBHomeEnt) July 25, 2025

So the Aztecs are the good guys, and the European explorers are the evil bloodthirsty villains? Wow, we’ve never seen that one before.

As a refresher, here’s what the Aztecs were actually like:

Read the whole thing.

In 1998, DC Comics published “The Berlin Batman:”

In Berlin, Germany in the year 1938, wealthy socialite Baruch Wane learns from his friend Komissar Garten that the police have confiscated the library, works, and notes of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, due to his stance against the Nazi Party policy of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Unbeknownst to Garten, Baruch is actually the mysterious Batman who has been terrorizing the wealthy members of the Nazi Party.

Years ago, when Baruch was still a child, he watched his Jewish parents get beaten to death by an anti-semitic mob. From that point on, Baruch swore that he would avenge their deaths and spend the rest of his life on a war against all criminals and injustice. As he grew up, he developed his mind and his body, and upon inheriting his parents wealth and estate, he became inspired by a bat which flew into his home and decided to use this symbol as a means to frighten criminals.

The following night of his visit with Garten, Baruch suits up and heads down to the trainyard in order to steal back Mises’s works. He tries to stop the train, but when Garten’s men surround him, he instead blows up the train so that way Mises’s works and ideals do not fall into the wrong hands.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time before that Batman’s role in that story gets swapped out to aiding the bad guys as well. (And it’s hard to believe that DC would allow a von Mises-supporting Batman in 2025 as well.) When George Lucas wanted to make a film in which the Vietcong were the good guys, at least he was smart enough to bury that idea deep into its subtext and build an entirely fantasy universe on top of it to hide his motives. When does Batman go off and fight for the 1619 Project?

THE LUXURIOUS DEATH RATTLE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN MAGAZINE: Megyn Kelly: Bye: Anna Wintour Politicized Her Fashion Magazine For Decades and Now is Out, with Maureen Callahan.

(Classical reference in headline.)

SCOTT JOHNSON: Tucker Carlson’s dark turn.

Thirty-four years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. published a 40,000-word essay in this magazine titled “In Search of Anti-Semitism,” wherein he renounced two prominent conservative figures for comments — much like Carlson’s — revealing their anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus. Among many other calumnies, Joseph Sobran, a senior editor at NR, had called Israel an “anti-Christian country,” and, more notoriously, [Pat] Buchanan had suggested that Jews seek to aid Israel by starting wars that Gentiles have to fight. Both men, Buckley concluded, had engaged in antisemitism, and both of their reputations suffered because of Buckley’s careful but devastating reproach.

The evidence of Carlson’s antisemitism is far more plentiful, and damning, than that used to indict Buchanan. Today, however, there is no figure on the American right with the gravitas of Buckley, who could literally write extremists and bigots out of the conservative movement with a well-argued essay. But even more central to the rise of Carlson and others of his ilk is that the moral and political guardrails that used to protect our civic life from the pollutive emanations of illiberalism and uncivilized behavior have all but vanished. The antibodies that a healthy society develops to resist Jew-hatred are fast dissipating. Eight decades after the end of World War II, the fading memory of the Holocaust, the rise of identitarian thinking, and the ideological corruption of American higher education have contributed to making our country a place where growing numbers of citizens find it reasonable to blame humanity’s perennial scapegoat, the Jews, for what ails society. Tucker Carlson’s enduring popularity indicates that the cancer on civilization that is antisemitism metastasizes apace.

Exit quote:

He’s totally gone. I don’t know if it’s the money or if he’s high on himself. Either way this person is now right up there with Candace Owens for me. https://t.co/eFeX4Oz6QF

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) July 25, 2025

LIONEL SHRIVER: Now I’ve left Britain, here’s what you look like.

In the birthplace of Brunel and the Industrial Revolution, nothing works. Trains are late or cancelled. Heathrow goes dark. It takes months and endless hair-tear to install a single residency’s fibre-optic cable. Construction is eternal; roadworks languish untended indefinitely, backing up traffic. Britain can no longer build anything. HS2 is an ever-costlier white elephant. Tradesmen are little kings, but finding one to do repairs to a reputable standard is like winning the lottery.

Small boats and sky-high legal immigration will continue to wreak demographic havoc. This change is permanent. Millions of immigrants from clashing traditions will bring only more of their friends and families. None of these people are going home. A succession of governments has systematically watered down British culture, until it’s a pale solution with no distinctive flavour, like over-extended squash.

Supposedly, a leading “British value” is “fair play”. So let’s talk about fairness. Amid an ever-escalating housing shortage, itself powered by mass immigration, your government uses your money to provide a free water-taxi service to your shores and to put up low-skilled, overwhelmingly male foreign citizens in four-star hotels. No one’s putting locals in free hotels.

Ten million working-age inhabitants are on benefits. Almost half of universal credit recipients need neither work nor look for work, and over a million are foreign-born. Soaring disability payments allow anyone to retire to a life of Netflix if they’re worried or sad. At once, the tax burden is the highest of the postwar era and set to rise further.
Small businesses are hammered. The British tax code severely punishes success at shockingly low levels of income. This is fair? If you haven’t downed tools and thrown yourself on the mercy of the state, you’re a sucker. Modern Britain rewards sloth, irresponsibility and self-pity.

Why is the mild-mannered academic David Betz now such a popular guest on British podcasts? Because Betz, a professor of war in the modern world, assesses the forbiddingly high likelihood of a British civil war.

Indeed: We are coming apart. How asylum, multiculturalism and contempt for the masses turned Britain into a tinder box.

As with Germany and the dangers of its over-reliance on “green” energy during his first term, British leftists don’t want to hear the message, but Trump isn’t wrong: Trump: Horrible migrant invasion is killing Europe.

Absolute FIRE. President Trump just called out Europe to stop the mass immigration "invasion"

"On immigration, you better get your act together or you're not going to have Europe anymore … you gotta stop this horrible invasion that's happening in Europe."

"This immigration is… pic.twitter.com/uLTEtbKTUQ

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 25, 2025

Related:

Things you need a passport for in Britain:

Access Pornhub.
Watch a protest in Leeds on X.

Things you don’t need a passport for in Britain:

Entering the UK on a small boat.

— Chris Rose (@ArchRose90) July 25, 2025

CANCELING COLBERT BEGINS THE END OF TELEVISION:

Here’s an experiment: Spend an hour or so surfing back and forth among basic cable channels, and then tell me what year it is. As I wrote about last August, cable is a zombie wasteland, a set of ghost towns airing reruns, movies, reruns of movies, and reruns of reruns. Suites of cable networks have been bundled into spin-off corporations by Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery as if they were parasitic, toxic assets that needed to be hived off before they infected and destroyed the host. These companies still make a lot of money, but that profit is collapsing as advertisers figure out that maybe viewers aren’t so keen on sitting through the 56th showing of The Office that evening.

But cable isn’t the only issue. Of the top 68 highest-rated single programs on all television in 2024, broadcast or cable, 65 were sporting events; number 39 was the Sunday Night Football studio show during a weather delay in October. Only two scripted shows, CBS’s Tracker and Young Sheldon (which ended last year), made the top 100. Sports are the last thing keeping the broadcast/cable television apparatus alive, and the gradual movement of sports programming into streaming, most notably Amazon’s grab of a share of the NBA contract for next season, signals that will meet its end, too.

We are in the midst of this giant transition of television from networks into streaming channels that have no fixed lineup. Appointment viewing, other than live sports, is simply a thing of the past. Small armies of staffers that built the model of a television network, thinking hard about lead-ins and demographics and time slots, are no longer needed.

Late-night shows, with their topicality, aren’t all that rewatchable, and therefore are among the more difficult things to shift into a streaming library. And people aren’t interested in waiting up late for conversations they can catch on YouTube. Colbert has been the national leader in late night for close to a decade, though Gutfeld! on Fox News gets about 50 percent more viewers. (Whether they’re awake or just fell asleep during Laura Ingraham is another question.) But even talking about winners and losers in this category obscures the ratings reality. The CBS Late Movie, a rerun it aired against The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the 1970s and ’80s, had an audience in 1972 of nearly seven million adults per film, nearly three times as many viewers as Colbert’s “top-rated” Late Show a half-century later. The movie cost nothing but library rights. The Late Show costs $100 million a year.

The technology of television — viewing moving images electronically in the home or on a portable device — will be around in some format forever. But other than sports, the idea of live (or live to tape) destination viewing is largely, if not entirely, dead and gone.

‘CRISIS’ AT MEDIA MATTERS, AS IT CUTS STAFF, STRUGGLES TO PAY LEGAL BILLS.

Insert Jeremy Clarkson meme here:

CA NOW SCRAMBLING TO AVOID ‘CONSEQUENCES OF ACTIONS’ TRUISM:

It was all climate cult fever dreams and unicorn farts until October of last year, when Phillips 66 and Valero nearly simultaneously announced refinery closures. Phillips was shutting down their 100-year-old facility outside of Los Angeles. Less than a week later, Valero Oil announced the company was considering shutting down its last two refineries in the state. Phillips was a blow, but the Valero announcement was an icy-cold bucket of reality, as those two facilities were responsible for 14% of ALL the gasoline refined in the state.

Suddenly, shuttering all the refineries and driving oil companies out of California wasn’t looking like the best-laid plan. Particularly when estimates started coming in from quickly demonized experts who said that a shortage of refined product, combined with a scheduled gas tax increase, could pop the already exorbitant price of petrol CA consumers pay into the stratosphere.

How much into the stratosphere? This much:

The stakes are particularly high. State modeling suggests that removing Benicia from the refining system could push pump prices toward $8 per gallon, particularly during summer demand peaks. Analysts warn that the closures could also reduce fuel inventories and strain supply chains across the western U.S.

That’s all good, right?

● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.

● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”

● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”

As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Mission (soon to be) accomplished!

As the Benicia refinery is the sole source of fuel for Travis Air Force Base and employs many area residents, there are a number of people who are whining about the abrupt closure announcement. Benicia’s totally woke mayor says he wishes they’d given the city more of a heads-up – okay. The city, which gets 20% of its operating budget from the refinery, is really confused why the company would leave.

Huh. Can’t imagine.

…Shutting down the facility, he added, would also be a major blow to the hundreds of residents who work there, not to mention the scores of restaurants, hotels and other businesses that provide services to those workers in this city of some 27,000 residents.

I’m so old, I can remember Democrat politicians and their operatives with bylines demanding that those who work with legacy energy sources “learn to code” instead. Benicia Mayor Steve Young certainly sounded angry about Valero a couple of years ago; why not the bite the bullet, tell his citizens they have to eat their spinach and let Big Oil leave town? Do it for Gaia!

What if no buyer emerges for the Benicia refinery? From Refineries to Fiefdoms: Is Newsom Orchestrating a State Takeover of California’s Oil Industry?

Buried in the California Energy Commission’s May 2024 Draft Transportation Fuels Assessment is an eye-popping section outlining “highly complex implementation policies” for managing gasoline supply. Among these is a plan for state-owned refineries, described in detail as a fallback option in the event of market “failures.”

In-between arresting paddleboarders and filling skateboard parks with sand, in 2020, the governor’s office issued a press release headlined, “Governor Newsom Announces California Will Phase Out Gasoline-Powered Cars & Drastically Reduce Demand for Fossil Fuel in California’s Fight Against Climate Change.”

Five years later, would he really ponder state-owned refineries? To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, depend upon it, sir — when a man knows he’s got two years left before he hits the presidential campaign trail, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

RUY TEIXEIRA: Today’s Non-Progressive Progressives. They’re not on the right side of history anymore:

Here are some of the ways that “progressives” have bid farewell to progress.

Colorblindness, anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. The quintessential moral commitment of midcentury progressives was to make American society truly colorblind. It was unfair and egregious that racial discrimination could truncate the life chances of black people and visit misery upon them. Therefore, progressives advocated and marched for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument. Not only was legislation passed to make such discrimination illegal but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became as close to consensual beliefs as you can get in America.

Americans today believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a 2022 University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” That view elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public.

Similarly, a 2023 Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what Americans deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, it should be noted, equal outcomes.

And it is what progressives used to believe in—indeed, mounted the barricades for. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century.

Read the whole thing.

But this isn’t “today’s” self-described Progressives. The original Progressives of the first-half of the 20^th century were thoroughly racist, from H.G. Wells to Margaret Sanger to Woodrow Wilson. Calvin Coolidge noted they weren’t on the right side of history a century ago:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

As the late Fred Siegel wrote in The Revolt Against the Masses, American progressives rebranded as liberals in the 1920s after the disastrous Wilson administration. The American left went back to calling themselves progressives after liberalism became an increasingly tainted word during the last decades of the 20^th century. What will be the next rebranding effort?

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Democrats Are Going to Run Hunter Biden, Aren’t They?

Part of me thinks that surely, SURELY, they’ll look at their abysmal approval ratings and learn a thing or two about how unpopular their agenda really is with the majority of Americans and maybe even run a more blue-dog Democrat this next time around. You know, more of a typical, traditional Democrat although if I’m being honest, I’m not sure what the heck that even looks like anymore.

The other part of me sees crap like this from The Atlantic and thinks Democrats are actively trying to destroy their own party and would consider running another Biden. You know, the degenerate crack-head version.

He’s William S. Burroughs meets MAHA:

Hunter Biden on the benefits of crack cocaine.

Definitely Joe's son.

An arrogant, ignorant, hostile clown.

pic.twitter.com/uf25reL79H

— john jackson (@pvtjokerus) July 21, 2025

QUESTION ASKED: Fantastic Four Review: Did Marvel Actually Deliver Something Worth Watching?

I didn’t know what to expect going into my local Alamo Drafthouse to see Disney-Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps. The company had taught me not to expect much over the past handful of years and, to be honest, the gushing reviews by the access media weren’t exactly giving me high hopes.

They also taught me that they’ll lick the boots of studios at their whim. It’s how they keep getting the access in their namesake.

But as the film kicked up I was instantly drawn in by the setting, and as the film continued I realized I wasn’t bored. In fact, I surprisingly found myself invested. Then about midway through the film, I realized that the movie had actually endeared itself to me in a way… then it got silly, but not in a way that really made me hate it.

Folks, I think we might have a decent Marvel film on our hands.

The Critical Drinker concurs: “It probably would have been considered thoroughly ‘mid’ a decade ago. But in these dark days of cinema, well, it’s by far the best superhero film of 2025. Make of that what you will.”

Earlier: James Pethokoukis on Fantastic Four’s Googie-inspired production design: Beyond The Jetsons: New Fantastic Four trailer offers a new vision of a fantastic future that never was.

JOEL KOTKIN: Fascism has not come to America.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Trumpism and fascism is that Trump stands, first and foremost, for Trump. He has no true ideological lodestone, which makes the fevered attempts to discern one just silly. His appeal lies not in the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1930s but in seemingly commonsense alternatives to the truly insane policies of the increasingly left-leaning Democrats – on issues from the border and transgender ‘rights’ to the protection of the criminal class. Economically, MAGA is more reactionary than visionary, pointing, as it does, towards a return to the torpid 1950s.

In contrast, Benito Mussolini identified himself as a ‘revolutionary’ transforming society. He wanted the state to become ‘the moving centre of economic life’. Fascist corporatism was widely embraced by Confindustria, the leading organisation of Italian industrialists, which was glad to see the end of class-fuelled conflict and welcomed the state’s investment in infrastructure. This may not have made all capitalists fascists at heart, but it preserved what Mussolini called formal adherence to the regime. His approach gained a surprising amount of admiration in Britain and elsewhere.

In some ways, fascist corporatism – rejecting the autonomy of private interests – is closer to ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and the environmental ‘great reset’ than it is to Trumpanomics, with its mixture of protectionist tariffs and tax cuts.

Indeed, the fascist streak of Trump’s long-term opponents is even more in evidence when it comes to their attitude to that most critical of rights: free speech. Ever since the 1960s, traditional liberal notions of free speech have been undermined, particularly in academia, by New Leftish notions of ‘repressive tolerance’, authored by German exile Herbert Marcuse, as well as the deeply violent ‘revolutionary ideas’ concocted by Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon and Mao.

These ideas have helped birth an increasingly authoritarian mood on campuses – a mood that recalls the popularity of fascist ideology among students a century ago. This authoritarianism comes primarily not from traditional repressive rightists, but from the mainstream left, which targets what it sees as ‘far right’. This includes anyone embracing even vaguely Trumpian ideas.

Tom Wolfe famously wrote that, “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe:” President Macron is playing with fire by recognizing Palestine. His imperious statement rewards the neo-fascists of Hamas and isolates the Jewish State.

As Jeff Goldstein notes:

GET READY TO ROOT FOR THE BAD GUYS! Coming in September, it’s Aztec Batman: 

From Warner Bros. Animation, Ánima and Chatrone, Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires reimagines the Batman mythos through the lens of Mesoamerican culture.

According to the official synopsis, the film “unfolds within the vibrant and fierce culture of 16th century Mesoamerica. In the time of the Aztec empire, tragedy strikes Yohualli Coatl, a young Aztec boy, when his father is murdered by Spanish conquistadors. To warn King Moctezuma and his high priest, Yoka, of imminent danger, Yohualli escapes to Tenochtitlán.

There, he trains in the temple of the bat god Tzinacan with his mentor, developing equipment and weaponry to confront the Spanish invasion and avenge his father’s death. Along the way, he encounters key figures like the fierce Jaguar Woman and the enchanting Forest Ivy.“

Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires will be available in the US exclusively on digital on September 19 and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on September 23. It will be available in both Spanish and English-language versions.

Back during Saturday Night Live’s brilliant first five years, they once ran a sketch featuring Dan Aykroyd as “Uberman,” Superman fighting for “untruth, injustice, and the Nazi way!” which was meant as comedy, but today’s version of Warner Brothers means it, apparently. It’s fascinating to see Batman fighting for – checking notes – the guys who ripped out human hearts for sacrifices to the gods, but here we are, I guess:

A new legend rises. AZTEC BATMAN: CLASH OF THE EMPIRES is coming to Digital 9/19. pic.twitter.com/YXn8VTzIng

— Warner Bros. Entertainment (@WBHomeEnt) July 25, 2025