JOHN KASS: Democrat Anguish Will Only Get Worse.

From New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the big cities that are led by Democrats are dying. And the Democrats who lived there know this. It presses down upon them.

And the recent ascent of the surging wild-eyed communist Zohran Mamdani over the tired and listless female groper and grandma killer Andrew Cuomo in the New York Democrat mayoral primary? It’s a gateway into the anguish of the Democrats.

“People go to cities and states where they can invest money and get a return on their investment,” billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis told Fox News after Mamdani’s stunning victory. “That’s what capitalism is all about. They’ll take a vibrant city and kill it.”

The left has already killed Chicago. Los Angeles was burned by fire and riots. New York still has a pulse, but the communist will squeeze the vibrancy of the city that never sleeps. And if things don’t go his way, his army will tear the city apart. Some of us have seen this movie before. It ends with illiterate cave dwellers wandering past the broken Statue of Liberty, unaware of what it once meant.

Read the whole thing.

MELANIE PHILLIPS: Nuremberg at Glastonbury.

Apparently the British government is shocked that the Bob Vylan spot was live-streamed on the BBC. The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy — the former chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East — has asked the BBC Director-General Tim Davie for an “urgent explanation” about what due diligence it carried out into Bob Vylan. Nandy’s spokesman said:

We strongly condemn the threatening comments made by Bob Vylan at Glastonbury.

Palestinianism has not just become the cause of causes for the young and progressive classes. It has also become viewed — obscenely — as a moral dividing line between those who lay noisy claim to conscience and those who they claim side with evil. The very reverse is the case. We are watching the performative moralisation of mendacity and murderous hatred.

In Britain, this has now reached critical mass. And both the BBC and the Labour government have played a key role in bringing about this wholesale hijack of conscience and repudiation of justice and rationality, and fuelling this current pre-pogrom climate of hatred of Israel.

Day in, day out the BBC pumps out Hamas propaganda — either from Gaza “sources” or laundered through the utterly compromised and complicit humanitarian and human rights establishment — that twists demonstrable facts in order to represent, entirely falsely, the Israeli targets of genocide as aggressors and human rights abusers.

Through serial lies and libels, through radical decontextualisation and selective reporting, the BBC has presented the IDF as demonic child-killers bent upon starving the Arabs of Gaza and wantonly killing them. Those screaming on innumerable BBC broadcasts about the numbers killed by the IDF in Gaza never acknowledge that, according to Hamas’s own statistics, more than 70 per cent of them were fighting-age males. If the BBC has ever reported on the Gazans being murdered by Hamas for the crime of receiving food aid from the Americans and the Israelis — as they are — or the Gazans expressing hatred of Hamas and gratitude to America and Israel — as they are— this must have somehow slipped under the radar.

The BBC is a principal engine of incitement to hatred of Israel. It embodies a hermetically sealed thought system in the cult of progressivism and, like the university humanities departments that closed the minds of its staff, it is beyond redemption.

As for the Starmer government, this has not only failed to tell people that this whole demonisation of Israel is based on distortion and blood libels but it has actually promoted them itself.

Meanwhile in America: State Department Looks To Revoke Visa For British Rappers Who Chanted ‘Death To The IDF.’ “A senior State Department official told The Daily Wire that it is ‘already looking at revocation’ of their visas ahead of a roughly twenty-city tour through the United States, with performances planned in several major cities, including Washington, D.C. ‘As a reminder, under the Trump Administration, the U.S. government will not issue visas to any foreigner who supports terrorists,’ the senior official said.”

UPDATE: State Department revokes visas for Bob Vylan after ‘death to the IDF’ chant.

And:

BREAKING: Bob Vylan has been dropped by United Talent Agency after their Glastonbury set, Sky News understandshttps://t.co/G8gDzyqv3Q

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/2pwTX0DdYH

— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 30, 2025

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO JUSTICE HAS GONE BEFORE! Biden’s Lone SCOTUS Pick Wonders What Aliens Would Think Of The Court’s Latest Decision.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett may have penned the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s recent case on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions. But it was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her dissent that landed in the spotlight — and not in a good way.

In her opinion for the 6-3 majority in Trump v. Casa, INC, Barrett jabbed at Jackson, suggesting that her dissent was “untethered” to any past precedent and stood in direct opposition to the Constitution.

“We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’S argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote.

But a closer look at Jackson’s dissent reveals that Barrett left out some of the strangest rabbit holes down which Jackson attempted to take the Court.

“A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘what good is the Constitution, then?’” Jackson wrote in her dissent.

Exit question:

OLD AND BUSTED: ‘I’m Not A Witch,’ Republican Candidate Christine O’Donnell Tells Delaware Voters.

—NPR, October 5^th, 2010.

The New Hotness?

WELKER: Trump called you a communist. Are you a communist?

MAMDANI: I am not and I already have to get used to the fact that the president is going to talk about how I look, how I sound, where I am from and who I am—I'm fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign… pic.twitter.com/MjNDOaNEIf

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 29, 2025

This is not terrible AI, it's a real message from the current frontrunner for NYC Mayor to his socialist comrades.

"The end goal of seizing the means of production."

I can't believe this is actually happening. pic.twitter.com/KNxQV2QCX7

— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 30, 2025

“I don’t think that we should have billionaires” – Zohran Mamdani, Democrat nominee for mayor of NYC pic.twitter.com/6oQkruUq4T

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 29, 2025

UPDATE:

So many fascinating Zohran moments in this video.

“Growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, one of the most natural things to wear on my body was the kheffiya.”

Zohran lived in South Africa for two years when he was 5 years old.

“When you’re a South Asian Muslim growing up… pic.twitter.com/4AEpNH7z39

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) June 30, 2025

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Hazzardous Stunt: General Lee Replica Soars Over City Fountain in Wild Video (WATCH).

The General Lee jumped the fountain today in Somerset pic.twitter.com/a0c433I15U

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) June 29, 2025

In case you’re wondering, an actual vintage Charger was not harmed in the making of this stunt: “Thankfully, it’s a clone built for stunts like this, not an actual ’69 Charger like the 300 that were destroyed in similar stunts performed during The Dukes of Hazzard’s 147-episode run.” Whoever the mechanics Warner Brothers hired to keep the show going were, they really earned their pay:

MOTHER OF THE YEAR AWARD:

I know people are going to get on Michelle Obama for other reasons, but what struck me is what a weird thing it is for a parent to say, that “the least” significant thing your reproductive system does is create life. I’d be worried how my kids took that. https://t.co/6Uh6brNjtY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 30, 2025

Michelle Obama on being "glad" she didn’t have a son: "He would’ve been a Barack Obama" https://t.co/fmXhTr17Ik

— The Hill (@thehill) June 19, 2025

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: More Likely Than Not, Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo.

I attended a screening the other day (June 15) of “The Stringer,” a provocative film that challenges authorship of the famous “Napalm Girl” photo, taken in Vietnam in June 1972.

I remain unpersuaded by the film’s centerpiece claim that a Vietnamese photographer other than Nick Ut of the Associated Press took the image, formally known as “The Terror of War.” The photo shows a cluster of frightened Vietnamese children, fleeing a misdirected air strike on their village, Trang Bang. At the center of the photograph is a wounded and naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc.

The weight of the evidence – including accounts by journalists who were at Trang Bang when the photo was made – still points to Ut’s authorship of the photograph, which won a Pulitzer Prize. More likely than not, the soft-spoken Ut took the image, as he says he did, despite claims to the contrary generated by the film more than 50 years afterward.

Read the whole thing.

TERRIFYING RADIO DISPATCH CAPTURES MOMENT SNIPER-WIELDING GUNMEN HIDING IN WOODS AMBUSH FIREFIGHTERS AND POLICE AFTER ‘SETTING BLAZE AS BAIT:’ At Least Two Dead and Multiple Injured.

THE WIMBLEDON POISONER: Avocado out, peas and vegan cream in as Wimbledon goes green.

Crushed peas will replace avocado at food outlets at Wimbledon this year as the All England Club bids to become more sustainable.

Smoked salmon that originates from fish farms has also been declared off the menu, with British trout taking its place.

Avocado has long been a favourite choice for Wimbledon spectators but there have been concerns over the environmental impact of growing them in vast quantities, so crushed — but not mushy — British-grown peas will take their place in dishes such as feta and avocado on toast.

The gardener Alan Titchmarsh, a regular in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, will be delighted — he wrote a letter to The Times in March saying avocados should be treated “like foie gras” and added: “don’t eat them”. He wrote they are “grown where the rainforest has been felled at an alarming rate to accommodate them [and] need huge and often scarce supplies of water” before being shipped 5,000 miles or more.

Related: Old and busted: Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood.”

The new silliness in Old Blighty? How avocados became a blood-soaked fruit – and cursed a generation.

(Classical reference in headline.)

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE GRETA HAS GONE BEFORE: William Shatner Says Captain Kirk Would Be ‘Appalled’ At Pace of Climate Change.

Captain James T. Kirk would be appalled at the rapid acceleration of climate change on Earth, says William Shatner, the Montreal-born actor who played the head of the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” franchise for decades.

“I think he would probably be as appalled as I am,” Shatner said during a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles.

The actor said he could imagine Kirk “skywriting” a message to his fellow Earthlings, urging them to take action.

“Education, education, read everything,” Shatner said. “Everybody should acquaint themselves with the problem, and make a decision.”

But if Shatner is a true believer in the religion of climate change, then he made a decision to ignore it completely when he went up in one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets in 2021: Billionaires’ Single Space Flight Produces a Lifetime’s Worth of Carbon Footprint — Report.

Speaking of the carbon footprint of Bezos and his acolytes: Elites who lecture you about climate change took 90 private jets (or super-yachts) to Jeff Bezos’ wedding.

To coin a couple of Insta-phrases, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when those who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. In the meantime, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: Only 5% of New Yorkers Voted for Mamdani.

Who are those 5%? They aren’t New Yorkers because polls showed us Mamdani performing poorly with anyone over 50, with African-American, Latino and working class white voters. What’s left? White hipsters and Muslim immigrants.

Mamdani’s base isn’t New Yorkers, it’s a coalition of white hipsters and Muslim immigrants, most of them weren’t even in the city during 9/11, like Mamdani, have no roots in the city, and no connection to its history. The quintessential New Yorker, as envisioned by a thousand Hollywood movies, TV shows and Broadway musicals, still exists, but is harder to find than ever. The city of those movies and shows can be glimpsed as a palimpsest under layers of chain stores, illegal migrants, social justice projects and vegan eateries before it vanishes again in the rain.

What happened to New York is what happened to legendary cities across the country and around the world, from Philly to London, which is that the revival of the 90s was the final act in driving out its working class and middle class population. Rents soared until the only young people who could afford to live there were white hipsters and third world immigrants.

And their politics became based on coalitions between the hipsters and the new arrivals. In New York City, as in London, it produced a Jihadist coalition that paved the way for a Muslim mayor.

Even by 9/11, New York City already wasn’t ‘that city’. The Giuliani revolution that swept out bums and criminals was a victim of its own success. Much of the middle class had already left which was why so many of the victims of 9/11 were commuters. Those who didn’t were soon completely priced out. The working class, the Irish, Jewish and Italian men and women who appear as comic characters in countless shows, were soon priced out of everything except projects. Even as the world mourned for New York, the New Yorkers were disappearing.

Hence the same ranked choice voting primary that foisted Bill de Blasio upon the city in 2013.

NUCLEAR WINTOUR WINDS DOWN: There will never be another Anna Wintour at Vogue. She’s made sure of it.

In the midst of Condé Nast’s descent into the banal, the most frequently asked question asked about Wintour’s embattled tenure has been “why is she still bothering?” One theory is that she wanted to surpass Edna Woolman Chase’s 37 year tenure as US editor-in-chief. In the event she has only equalled it.

Or perhaps she felt she had some “reputational” issues to finesse. In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, demonstrators with placards massed outside Wintour’s picturesque red brick downtown townhouse to protest against what they saw as Condé Nast’s (and her) long history of elitism and racism.

The case for the prosecution against Wintour has been going on since she was first appointed editor of the then genteel and cosy British Vogue in 1988. Her brusque manner, Stakhanovite work ethic and immunity to the cold (she wore micro minis throughout her two pregnancies there) inspired the moniker “Nuclear Wintour”.

Many of the ideals, values and people she has championed in her magazine – fur, P Diddy, Mike Tyson, more fur, Kanye West, Harvey Weinstein, John Galliano and Asma al-Assad – seem tone deaf, especially viewed with hindsight. There are numerous witnesses to her rudeness. You don’t inspire a culture defining book and a film (The Devil Wears Prada) by being bland.

* * * * * * * *

Wintour publicly apologised for her alleged sins after the BLM debacle, vowing to right the wrongs. Condé Nast is now more inclusive of skin colour and (a little more) inclusive of body type. On an unforgivable downside, in its general confusion about what it’s meant to be (you’d have thought the clue was in the name), Vogue, particularly online and on social media, has become a fetid hotbed of blatantly uninformed, anti-Israel propaganda, identity politics and keffiyehs. I know of at least one Jewish digital content editor who left a job she initially loved under Wintour because the perceived attitude of her team, which she felt powerless to challenge, became unbearable. Other Jewish editors still in the company are deeply unhappy – feeling unheard and unsupported by the powers that be.

What does this have to do with Wintour? It’s happening under her watch. For the past decade, she has been ever more promoted within the company until her purview reaches just about every nook and cranny. “Anna knows what’s on every page,” one European director of editorial content told me.

As with Graydon Carter stepping down as maximum editor of sister Condé Nast publication Vanity Fair, Wintour retiring as editor in chief (though remaining as “chief content office for Condé Nast and global editorial director for Vogue”) is yet another example of what Joe Nocera recently dubbed “The Luxurious Death Rattle of the Great American Magazine.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS WORKING OVERTIME TO MAINSTREAM MAMDANI:

As Noam Blum of Tablet tweets, “The weirdest part about this piece is that it has nothing to do with the title. The piece is not about how Jews love Mamdani, nor does it offer any examples of Jews who love Mamdani. I’m legitimately confused by the choice of this title for anything other than rage baiting.” Which brings us to this banger of a headline, which ran on Tuesday:

We really do need a new definition of antisemitism apparently!

With Sharpton. Are they touring Crown Heights next? https://t.co/HpRiyv5PgM

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) June 28, 2025

And: NYC mayoral nominee’s anti-Israel views, political rise closely tied to Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour.

UPDATE:

UPDATE: To circle back to Michelle Goldberg’s headline atop this post:

ROGER KIMBALL: Minuting the minutiae.

For most mortals, most of the time, the deliberations and periodic eructations of the Supreme Court can seem like so many bulletins from the Office of Circumlocution.

Every now and then, however, the Court’s declarations mesmerize the public’s attention.

So it was on Friday, June 27, the last day of the Court’s term. Four cases were up for its scrutiny. One case, a congressional redistricting case in Louisiana, was pushed off to the fall term. (Often described as a “voting rights case,” the real issue is whether redrawing the map to create black-majority districts is permissible.)

Many Americans were happy about the 6–3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that parents in Maryland may opt to keep their children out of primary-school classes that feature “LGBTQ+” storybooks.

The same people who applauded that decision were happy about the 6–3 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld a Texas law requiring age verification to protect minors from accessing porn sites on the internet.

But the case that really galvanized the public was Trump v. Casa, in which the Court finally began to deal with the outrageous spectacle, unknown until the twentieth century, of district court judges issuing universal injunctions or restraining orders in order to stymie executive—i.e., presidential—actions that they dislike.

Read the whole thing.

HAMAS CHIEF ‘WHO MASTERMINDED OCTOBER 7 ATTACK’ IS KILLED BY ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE, IDF SAY:

The Hamas chief allegedly behind the attacks on October 7 has been killed by an Israeli airstrike, according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

In a post on X on Saturday, the IDF reported it ‘eliminated’ Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa in a targeted airstrike on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza on Friday.

Describing him as both ‘one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing’ and Hamas itself, it said: ‘Issa led Hamas’ force build-up, training, and planned the October 7 massacre.’

It continued: ‘As Head of Combat Support, he advanced aerial & naval attacks against Israelis.’

The attacks on October 7, 2023, saw thousands of Hamas fighters storm into southern Israel where they killed 1,320 Israelis and took a further 251 hostage.

The IDF claims Al-Issa ‘played a significant role in the planning and execution’ of the attack as well as serving as Head of the Training Headquarters.

The post also suggests he is ‘one of the last remaining senior Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip’ and ‘a key source of knowledge’.

‘The IDF & ISA will continue to locate and eliminate all terrorists involved in the October 7 massacre,’ they added.

Curiously, the IDF causing the mastermind behind the slaughter of music festival attendees to assume room temperature won’t make the attendees and headliners of Glastonbury very happy, or the likely future mayor of New York:

Here’s Zohran Mamdani being given three opportunities to condemn the antisemitic battle cry “Globalize the Intifada” and refusing to do so each time.

He won’t condemn it because he’s led marches galvanized by it.

This is who he is.pic.twitter.com/PztZpmHdKe

— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) June 29, 2025

DEVELOPING: Thom Tillis Announces He’s Not Running for Reelection:

BREAKING

In a statement, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis announces he’s not running for re-election.

“…As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since…

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 29, 2025

Politico yesterday: Trump threatens Tillis with primary challenge.

RICH LOWRY: Blast ‘em: Get rid of the blocky brutalist buildings that blight our nation’s capital.

[T]he FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the UK building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.

The moves are in keeping with the spirit of President Donald Trump’s executive order stipulating that federal buildings should “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”

That EO should be considered common sense, but has several trigger words for defenders of the architectural status quo, including “traditional,” “classical,” and perhaps foremost of all, “beautify.”

In response, the American Institute of Architects expressed its “strong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities.”

According to The Nation magazine, Trump’s initiative is part of an agenda to “to make historical architecture on the whole inextricable from Eurocentric white supremacy.”

In short, it’s an unforgivable offense to want a government building to look nice.

Brutalism, with its blocky, minimalist structures made of poured concrete, was a creation of a post-war Europe that wanted to embrace the fresh and new and to economize on rebuilding.

Although the name “brutalism” perfectly captures the aesthetic effect, it actually comes from the French for raw concrete, béton brut.

Amazing – the far-left Nation magazine’s hatred of Trump has them defending the design concepts of a prominent member of Vichy France: Le Corbusier was ‘militant fascist’, two new books on French architect claim.

JOY REID OUTDOES THE LEFTISTS WHO LIKE TO CALL TRUMP HITLER:

Reid then claimed that Rubio was hoping to inherit the MAGA mantle: “Marco Rubio is doing what he’s doing now because in his mind, he thinks that somehow he can inherit the cult of Donald Trump. That when Trump is aged out and when the devil takes him home, when he goes back below earth, from whence he came, when his soul — when the man — when the creature to which he has sold his soul takes him — he thinks that he will inherit that cult … they all think it. They think they can inherit the cult.”

Flying headlong into crazyville, Reid then likened Trump to Jim Jones: “What they don’t understand is that when Jim Jones was gone, there was no other Jim Jones. There was only one Jim Jones. And when he killed all those people in the forests of Guyana, even his son could not become the next Jim Jones. Because cults are sui generis. They worship one person — not even God — they worship one god. And these people are a monotheistic cult. And the mono — the god — is named Donald Trump.” Uh-huh. And so does Reid think that Trump is going to force all of his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid? Coming from her, it wouldn’t be a surprise in the least.

She’s not even the first to make the comparison. In August of 2021, the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported in his “Liberal Media Scream” column: New CNN low, comparing Trump ‘cult’ to Jonestown massacre.

This week’s Liberal Media Scream features CNN’s Brian Stelter’s Trump Derangement Syndrome hitting a new low, inviting a comparison of the “cult” of Trump to the Jim Jones cult killings in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.

On his Sunday show, Reliable Sources, the liberal media nag brought aboard Rep. Jackie Speier, who survived the Jonestown massacre, to equate the “cult of Trump” with the mass murder-suicide of 918 followers of Rev. Jim Jones. “I wanted to hear her thoughts about the comparison, the notion of the cult of Trump,” Stelter said in setting up the welcoming California lawmaker.

Stelter played along: “It’s scary to hear that when you have observed the Trump phenomenon, you have seen similarities to Jonestown.”

Stelter had opened the segment by relaying feedback from international viewers asking, “Why doesn’t the American media just call out Trump for what he is, call Trump fandom for what it is? Sometimes they use the word, cult.”

Do Reid and Stelter know that Jones was a central figure in the San Francisco Democrat machine in the 1970s? The Road to Jonestown.

RIP: Dave Parker, Baseball Hall of Famer and MVP winner, dead at 74.

Hall of Famer Dave Parker has died at the age of 74. The Pittsburgh Pirates announced Parker’s death before their game on Saturday.

Parker played for six teams during his 19 major-league seasons, 11 of those seasons with the Pirates. He also played for the Cincinnati Reds, Oakland Athletics, Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels and Toronto Blue Jays.

During his MLB career from 1979-1991, Parker batted .290/.339/.471 with 2,712 hits, 339 home runs, 526 doubles, 1,493 RBI and 154 stolen bases. He won World Series championships with the 1979 Pirates and 1989 Athletics, was a seven-time All-Star and earned consecutive National League batting titles in 1978 and 1979.

In 1979, Parker won the NL MVP award with a .334 average and .970 OPS with 30 homers, 34 doubles, 117 RBI and 20 steals. He finished second in NL MVP voting in 1985 with the Reds, leading the league with 125 RBI.

If there’s thunder tonight, you’ll know why:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Back in December 2008, the face of NBC News begged the leader of the Democratic Party to raise gasoline prices: Tom Brokaw suggested that then-President Elect Obama tank the economy even more than it was by the end of the year, by sticking it to commuters’ wallets:

Let’s talk for a moment about consumer responsibility when it comes to the auto industries. As soon as gas prices dropped, consumers moved back to the larger cars once again. The SUVs are the big gas consumers. Why not take this opportunity to put a tax on gasoline, bump it back up to $4 a gallon where people were prepared to pay for that, and use that revenue for alternative energy and as a signal to the consumers: “Those days are gone. We’re not going to have gasoline that you could just fill up your tank for 20 bucks anymore.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post were also fine with this idea back then, when it might have been implemented on a national scale. Now that it could — pardon the pun — tank a potential Democrat front runner in 2028, omertà.

BOB VYLAN, GLASTONBURY AND THE BANALITY OF JEW HATRED:

If you can’t see it now, you never will. The sight of tens of thousands of people at Glastonbury yesterday joining in a spirited chant of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ was the sight of us officially becoming a very different country, I fear. One in which anti-Israel hysteria has so flawlessly rehabilitated Jew hatred that it has become unthinking, conformist, almost mundane. Something that Home Counties idiots can jive to before adjusting their hot pants and heading off to catch Charli XCX. Something that is broadcast by the BBC into millions of homes. The banality of the new anti-Semitism.

Let’s not muck about here. When punk-rap duo Bob Vylan called for the killing of Israeli soldiers yesterday – as they warmed up the crowd at the West Holts Stage for every Israelophobe’s new favourite Irish rap trio, Kneecap – they weren’t opposing war. They were calling for war, and on the one army on Earth charged with protecting Jews from genocide. The army now at war with a jihadist cult that murdered, raped and kidnapped its way through an Israeli festival not unlike Glastonbury on 7 October 2023. The army that almost all Israelis are expected to serve in. Indeed, those making excuses for that sickening call-and-response yesterday hopefully don’t know that Hamas justifies killing Israeli civilians on the grounds that they are basically all tainted by national service. That they are all enemy combatants. Death, death to that IDF?

Whether we got here by ignorance or conscious hatred is pretty much moot. The end result is British Jews – at Glasto or at home – watching thousands whoop as Jew-killing slogans are recited. Frontman Bobby Vylan also treated the crowd to a deranged rant about the indignities he suffered working for a ‘Zionist’ at a record label, because he had to listen to his boss talk favourably about Israel. I wonder if he knows that the vast majority of British Jews are Zionists. I wonder if he cares.

I wonder if he knows the back catalog of the man whose stage name he borrowed? I wonder if he cares:

Meanwhile, more peace and love coming from the British pop music scene: Met won’t prosecute Kneecap over ‘Kill your MP.’

How low is too low? Kneecap seem determined to find out, judging by their never-ending mission to troll the UK. But last month even the West Belfast trio seemed to go too far, after a video emerged of them calling for the death of British MPs. It prompted a grovelling statement from the band, insisting that they would not incite violence against any individual. Real hard men, eh?

Of course, cynics suggested that Kneecap’s capitulation had less to do with genuine remorse and concern for the likes of David Amess’s family, and more to do with an effect on ticket sales. But now the not-so-funny trio can sleep easy, for Steerpike has checked and counter-terror police have confirmed they will not be charging the group over a November 2023 video in which they say ‘the only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP’.

I’m so old, I can remember back to last year, when such language could get one arrested in England: How one woman’s racist tweet sparked a free speech row.

In July last year, prompted by a false rumour that an illegal immigrant was responsible for the murder of three girls at a dance workshop in Southport, Connolly posted online calling for “mass deportation now”, adding “set fire to all the… hotels [housing asylum seekers]… for all I care”.

Connolly, then a 41-year-old Northampton childminder, added: “If that makes me racist, so be it.”

At the time she had about 9,000 followers on X. Her message was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it three and a half hours later.

In October she was jailed after admitting inciting racial hatred.

Three appeal court judges this week ruled the 31-month sentence was not “manifestly excessive”.

Stephen O’Grady, a legal officer with the Free Speech Union (FSU), said the sentence seemed “rather steep in proportion to the offence”.

His organisation has worked with Connolly’s family since November and funded her appeal.

Mr O’Grady said Connolly “wasn’t some lager-fuelled hooligan on the streets” and pointed to her being a mother of a 12-year-old daughter, who had also lost a son when he was just 19 months old.

He said there was a “difference between howling racist abuse at somebody in the street and throwing bricks at the police” and “sending tweets, which were perhaps regrettable but wouldn’t have the same immediate effect”.

It’s like Prime Minister Starmer has multiple different standards of justice for his nation. Two tiers, as it were:

One British comedian does an awesome Norm Macdonald impersonation:

Alas, England in general seems determined to remain a safe space for people who want to kill Jews, based on the ideology of current management.

UPDATE:

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is Mel Brooks Torching His Legacy in Real Time?

Quick, what was your favorite scene from “History of the World, Part II?”

Don’t have one? Never saw it? Wasn’t even aware such a project existed?

You’re not alone. Hulu’s ill-fated attempt to revive Mel Brooks’ 1981 comedy didn’t rock the culture. Reviewers were mostly kind, but the streaming series came and went without much fuss.

Blame a crowded marketplace or the fact that it’s hard to duplicate Brooks’ brand of silliness even when he served as an executive producer on the miniseries.

Looking back, it was funnier to leave a film like “History of the World, Part I” as is. The title is part of the joke, no?

Now, Brooks is back. Twice. Is it wise to dust off his comedy classics to appease an industry desperate for IPs?

Will new, inferior Brooks titles diminish his canon?

He just announced a belated sequel to “Spaceballs,” his intermittently funny “Star Wars” spoof from 1987. The original isn’t a classic like “The Producers,” “Young Frankenstein” or “Blazing Saddles,” but it gently skewered George Lucas’ franchise in memorable ways.

Spaceballs isn’t that good as a film, but it’s become much loved because Brooks was one of the first to parody the sci-fi genre, doing for the Star Wars franchise what Blazing Saddles did for westerns and Young Frankenstein did for the 1930s Universal monster movies. But most of Brooks’ post-Young Frankenstein movies failed to work at that same level of excellence, but because of the titles that Toto mentions above, Brooks’ cinematic immortality as a comedic director is assured, no matter how bad the latest product that trades on his goodwill and small involvement turns out to be.

UPDATE: A Look at Mel Brooks’ Illustrious Life and Career in Photos As the Legendary Actor Turns 99 Years Old Today.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Liberal Justice Kagan Explained Why District Courts Can’t Be Allowed to Constrain Presidents… in 2022.

OLD AND BUSTED: “All We Are Saying, Is Give Peace A Chance.”

The New Hotness? Glastonbury rapper leads ‘death to IDF’ chant.

UPDATE:

If they said Death to Muslims
Their events licence would be revoked . https://t.co/ioXcPwq6j9

— Catherine Blaiklock BP (@blaiklockBP) June 28, 2025

OLD AND BUSTED: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The New Hotness? If a CNN journalist announces to the public that she doesn’t watch CNN either, will anybody hear it?

Pro tip: it's always a good idea to actually watch the news before you comment on it 👇 pic.twitter.com/LxDMeCJuRn

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) June 28, 2025