AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

pic.twitter.com/chHBmI2zUH

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 3, 2026

QUESTION ASKED:

“The U.S. Air Force is playing Guns N’ Roses at Mt. Rushmore on the eve of #America250 , and you’re blackpilling???” pic.twitter.com/JFWfkvWNgm

— Dillon I. Ivy 🇺🇸 (@DillonIIvy1) July 4, 2026

That’s great, but it’s not as great as Steve Gadd, who went on to play with just about everybody, playing drums in 1970 in the US Army band to provide the backbone of a surprisingly funky “Cissy Strut:”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Sophia and the Fourth.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: We’ve Got the Gayest Parliament.

Happy pride! The outgoing prime minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, was celebrating the end of Pride Month and, looking out at the crowd, said what I’m awarding Quote of the Week: “I’m really proud that we’ve got the gayest parliament, I don’t think just of all time—anywhere in the world. I don’t think there’s any parliament that is gayer than this one.”

Considering this is a country where everyone in the government wears wigs and dresses to do their jobs, I suppose being the gayest parliament is somewhat of an accomplishment.

I’ll add that there is likely no media company gayer than this one, not even close. Except maybe Out magazine. But a lot of good that does me! In a just world I would have been the grand marshal of the parade, but it seems that all Pride Month marches have been entirely rebranded as political, and they are not wavin’ my banner. There are barely even vestigial references to the original concept. Here’s the new Dyke March motto: “We’re here! We’re queer! Free Palestine is our demand!” It doesn’t even rhyme, folx.

America’s Newspaper of Record informs that that particular style of intersectionality isn’t going to end well:

Hamas Announces Pride Month Kick-Off Party On Roof Of Very Tall Hotel https://t.co/NRqmqEhkaU pic.twitter.com/lVlKPeRYPN

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 29, 2024

Related:

This is hilarious. Dude, we’ve been telling you. They hate the gays. Like really hate. Not like in a fun way. https://t.co/aBYv2oLV7Y

— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) July 3, 2026

COMMUNIST DROPS MASK:

He’s been trained by his political handlers to smile almost incessantly. It’s an obvious forced smile to make his odious policies seem reasonable and safe.

Here, he’s lost the smile. The result? He and his message convey their inherent hostility. pic.twitter.com/6QesVnKp1w

— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) July 3, 2026

Curiously though, for the very first time, a socialist bureaucrat doesn’t know how a desk works:

Are we as offended by Mamdani using George Washington's desk to make a speech once we realize he doesn't even know how a desk works? pic.twitter.com/7PGw4tsLvU

— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) July 3, 2026

UPDATE: Mamdani’s staffers, or whoever these human props are, certainly don’t look thrilled to be celebrating America’s Semiquincentennial:

JUST IN: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani used America’s 250th anniversary to sharply criticize the country, accusing the U.S. of allowing children to go hungry while billionaires and “oligarchs” gain more power.

He said America’s wealth was built by working people with “calloused,… pic.twitter.com/p7Ayuza5je

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 3, 2026

I have never once made any of these faces on the Fourth of July. pic.twitter.com/ZYzqB0K4f3

— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) July 3, 2026

STAR TREK’S SYNTHEHOL, THE EARLY YEARS: Heineken’s newest Beer has zero alcohol and sugar.

The “all or nothing” era of the American bar scene may officially be over. Whether it’s driven by your usual morning HIIT class or just a desire to stay sharp, more drinkers are reaching for the bottle opener without looking for a buzz. Heineken is betting that those consumers are now looking for even more “nothing” in their brews—specifically, the removal of the final few nutritional hurdles.

The company is bringing a new alcohol-free beer to the market. The product, called Heineken 0.0 Ultimate, contains no alcohol, no calories, and no sugar, which the company claims is a first for the American non-alcoholic beer category.

Described as fruit-forward with a mild malt character, the beer goes through the same double-brewing process used for other 0.0 products, which removes the alcohol before packaging.

I just tried a bottle – when first cracked open, it definitely has the same slightly skunky smell of Heineken, and while it tastes somewhat like it, it’s more Heineken-adjacent than the real thing. It’s also a bit watery in texture, which is a frequent complaint about zero alcohol wines: Non-alcoholic wine is mostly terrible, but here’s why.

Katie Espinosa is the Fine Wine Director for Johnson Brothers Wisconsin and, prior to that, she worked for many years in restaurants as a manager and sommelier. She says the increased popularity of Dry January and “sober curiosity” in general has encouraged the production of more alcohol-free wine, even if it has much room for improvement.

“There is definitely a trend toward moderation and health, which for some, can include less alcohol consumption,” says Espinosa. “So the effort to make better products in any category is important, and NA wine is no exception.”

According to Espinosa, there is a difference between non-alcoholic wine and de-alcoholized wine, which will affect the drinking experience – and might affect which word to look for on the bottle.

“NA wine often never had alcohol in it, or very little. De-alcoholized wine is made like traditional wine and had the alcohol removed, usually by vacuum distillation, or reverse osmosis, similar to purifying water,” she says.

However, regardless of how the alcohol is removed, wine without it will lose the mouth feel and weight many drinkers enjoy. Also, the lack of fermentation, which is the process of producing alcohol, will dull flavors, aromas and textures.

“In NA and de-alcoholized wines, the alcohol is replaced with concentrated grapes, sugars and juice to make up for the loss when the alcohol is removed and lack of fermentation,” says Espinosa. “Many of the aromas in wine are carried to the nose through evaporating alcohol, so naturally, some of that is lost when the alcohol is removed.”

In short, this is why most NA wines taste like juice, because they are, more or less, juice.

Perhaps the answer is to skip the middleman and go straight to the source: Water sommeliers are pushing premium stills and sparklings to American diners who want a luxury experience. But will they swallow the hype?

WE’VE NEVER TRIED ‘REAL SOCIAL HOUSING:’ Hall Of Eternal Shame.

1. Pruitt-Igoe (Saint Louis)

An early experiment from the 1950s, Pruitt-Igoe became an early example, with the crime and vacancy rates accelerating as fast as the facilities themselves deteriorated.

An early example of “social housing”, it was also one of the first to be abandoned; its 33 high-rises were all demolished over fifty years ago.

As Tom Wolfe wrote in From Bauhaus to Our House: 

On each floor there were covered walkways, in keeping with [Le Corbusier’s] idea of “streets in the air.” Since there was no other place in the project in which to sin in public, whatever might ordinarily have taken place in bars, brothels, social clubs, pool halls, amusement arcades, general stores, corncribs, rutabaga patches, hayricks, barn stalls, now took place in the streets in the air. Corbu’s boulevards made Hogarth’s Gin Lane look like the oceanside street of dreams in Southampton, New York. Respectable folk pulled out, even if it meant living in cracks in the sidewalks. Millions of dollars and scores of commission meetings and task-force projects were expended in a last-ditch attempt to make Pruitt-Igoe habitable. In 1971, the final task force called a general meeting of everyone still living in the project. They asked the residents for their suggestions. It was a historic moment for two reasons. One, for the first time in the fifty-year history of worker housing, someone had finally asked the client for his two cents’ worth. Two, the chant. The chant began immediately: “Blow it … up! Blow it … up! Blow it … up! Blow it … up! Blow it … up!” The next day the task force thought it over. The poor buggers were right. It was the only solution. In July of 1972, the city blew up the three central blocks of Pruitt-Igoe with dynamite.

The caption of the photo of tower block going down reads, “The Pruitt-Igoe projects, St. Louis, July 15, 1972. Mankind finally arrives at a workable solution to the problem of public housing.”

INVASION OF THE AI BODY SNATCHERS: The Clone Wars: How AI is Secretly Copy-Pasting Your Favorite YouTubers.

The example spotted by music YouTuber Rick Beato is particularly pathetic. I don’t think Hal or Colossus is cranking these out in its spare time; a human has to prompt AI to make the videos, and write the script for the AI narrator to record, to produce a pathetic clone of guitarist Rhett Shull (seen in the top right of Beato’s video thumbnail, and like Beato, Shull has been making YouTube videos for about a decade now).

I assume whoever is badly cloning Shull is hoping for a little bit of ad revenue from his AI clips, or simply bored in his basement, but this is just bizarre:

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

pic.twitter.com/RwaXS7UNp7

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 2, 2026

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH CHRIS CUOMO IS A VOICE OF SANITY:

Tucker is all over the place here, it’s like watching someone try to skate for the first time.
The others who’ve sat opposite him during interviews couldn’t elicit such a reaction because they’re either curated, unserious sycophants or controlled opposition. https://t.co/zZuWQpu6w9

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) July 3, 2026

“PROGRESSIVE” LEFT GOES BACK TO THE FUTURE: Did a CNN Anchor Really Just Say This About Jewish Democrats?

[Pennsylvania Gov. Josh] Shapiro — who would have been a much better pick than Tim Walz — was rejected because he’s Jewish. That’s a good indicator of where the Democratic Party, which is being taken over by pro-Palestinian Islamist socialists, is heading.

And now CNN anchor Elex Michaelson made the issue even more clear. Check out what he had to say about Shapiro and Senator Jon Ossoff, who is also Jewish.

“On the Jewish thing,” the panelist began, “he is Jewish. He might be the Democrat that can thread the needle. Because even though he’s Jewish, he’s very critical of the Israeli government, very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu. He has credibility on that issue. So it’s possible that I think he could be … fill that lane in between the two extremes of the Democratic Party.”

“Ask Scott Wiener how that’s working out for him,” the other panelist remarked. She’s not wrong.

Michaelson then chimed in. “As a Jew, some people read a little more Jewish than other people. And Jon Ossoff may not read as Jewish as Josh Shapiro does, for whatever that’s worth.”

Yikes.

Now imagine substituting ‘gay’ or ‘Muslim’ for ‘Jewish’ and watch the Left’s heads explode.

Absolutely canceled. In a heartbeat.

Elsewhere in the Wide, Wide, World of DemSocs: Darializa Avila Chevalier’s Hostility to Interracial Romances and ‘Ugly Colonizer Women’ Earns Praise From Ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

The former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard turned Louisiana lawmaker said he agreed with her desire to keep the bloodlines pure.

“Well, I think that people have the right to preserve their particular heritage,” Duke told the Washington Free Beacon after being reached by phone. “And if she’s concerned about preserving her heritage if it’s Somali, or whatever she is, she’s certainly got the right to do that.”

Chevalier’s position on interracial relationships stems from a now-deleted social media post from September 2019 in which she criticized black and Arab men for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.” Chevalier, who describes herself as “Afro-Latina” and has said she operates “within the black queer feminist lens,” is not Somali.

Duke and Chevalier have more in common than may meet the eye. Duke’s insurgent 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial campaign—where he was effectively the GOP nominee—caused an uproar in the national Republican Party, which ultimately supported the Democrat (the famously corrupt Edwin Edwards, who won). Chevalier’s extreme left-wing views, including those on race, are today causing similar ferment and embarrassment among Democrats, but so far, the national party has yet to disavow her.

The political journalist Mark Halperin on Monday quoted an unnamed “Democratic Party stalwart” fretting that, “Chevalier is our David Duke. She is poisoning the possibility of a Democratic majority.”

Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is up to – but they know it’s going to end very badly, one way or another: Party Panic: Donny Deutsch Says GOP Will Paint ALL Dems as Socialists and Anti-Semites for Embracing DSA.

Donny Deutsch, on MSNOW, just gave us an inside sneak peek at establishment Democrats’ panic about the rise of extremist DSA candidates:

"Well, Democrats have gone off the rails… Democrats right now are focused on two things:"

• "Antisemitism."
• "Socialism."

"This is… pic.twitter.com/TiLa0d5XAt

— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) July 2, 2026

Tweet continues:

“This is ridiculous… let’s abolish ICE, let’s abolish prisons, let’s abolish everything, let’s abolish the police. It’s INSANE.”

“Republicans are going to TAR them with this… every Republican strategist is salivating on what these people have said in the past, and they’re going to wallpaper it with it.”

“Democrats are going down a bad path. They’re electing these Democratic socialists. It’s a disaster. No matter what you think of it, wherever your politics are, it’s bad strategy.”

In 2018, Deutsch shouted on MSNBC:

“Our democracy is under siege. People need to start taking to the streets. This is a dictator. This is not something to analyze anymore.”

Host Nicolle Wallace said, “Yeah” as Deutsch was speaking, and he went on to say Trump should frighten anyone “if you are an American.”

“This is frightening stuff. If you are an American, if you’re somebody who is 80 years old and sitting at home and you’ve watched the greatness of this country, you should be terrified, and if you’re a 12-year-old and the future is in front of you, this is terrifying. This is not time to analyze and pundit. People, we need a revolution at this point,” he said.

Over the past decade, a whole lot of people took Deutsch at his word. As they say at Faber College:

Finally, VDH writes: The new socialists — Elite, ungrateful, and toxic as ever.

Socialists and communists have no confidence in winning over the majority of the American people, at least outside blue-city and blue-state districts. Hence, their efforts to change balloting laws, destroy the border, import angry, poor, new constituents, stage violent street confrontations, and either celebrate or contextualize assassinations from the attempts on Trump to the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Sane Democrats would reexamine 2024 and conclude the party was far too left-wing and the antidote was a return to the winning formulas of Bill Clinton. But unhinged socialists and communists would claim that 2024 was lost because they were not far-left enough. So we are to believe that Americans scared of Harris’s poorly disguised radicalism can be won over by scaring them even further? A communist in 2028 can win over America when a socialist in 2024 could not?

Don’t get cocky, to coin an Insta-phrase. But do take note, as Scott Pinsker writes: Memo to MAGA: Stop Being Idiots — The Dems Are TELLING US How to Destroy Them!

AIRMAN FLIES TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: Airman arrested during Capitol Hill protest urging Trump and Vance’s impeachment.

An airman was arrested on Wednesday during a protest on Capitol Hill calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

The airman, identified as Maj. Jason Watson, was charged with violating 22-1307, Crowding, Obstructing, and Incommoding. The advocacy group Removal Coalition organized the press conference at which Watson appeared and Rep. Al Green (D-TX) also attended.

“For the past 18 months, we the people have allowed the highest levels of the executive branch of the federal government to violate our Constitution and their oath to it with impunity,” he said at the press conference.

JODIE FOSTER SAYS THAT AI CAN APPARENTLY MAKE SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT AND ENJOYABLE BIG SCREEN MOVIES NOW:

Jodie dishing out more reasons to love AI. https://t.co/CID6iyh4De

— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) July 2, 2026

KENNEDY AT REASON TV: The last time NYC elected a mayor like Mamdani, it ended in bankruptcy.

Mamdani has appeared surprisingly chummy with Trump; perhaps he’s terrified of this headline appearing in a year or two:

2026: A WEIMAR ODYSSEY. Sir, Why Do You Want Babies To Suck Your Nipples? “‘ The conflict originated in 2019 when Buckley… posted on Facebook about inducing lactation in order to breastfeed his infant son. At the time, while Buckley’s wife was still pregnant, he publicly shared that he was taking hormones to grow breasts…’ This is where we are, people. Everyone remember where we parked.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Why socialism will fail.

For those impervious to the siren call of socialism, its activities in the world seem like the truth according to Hegel, “a bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunk.” The sitting New York Democrats that Mamdani’s new squad just defeated are pretty far left. But they are the soul of moderation compared to the newcomers.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who will be the Democratic candidate for New York’s 13th district, wants to abolish prisons, abolish ICE, abolish borders and defund the police. She thinks “all deportations are wrong” and has called the United States an “effing disgrace.” “I forgot to get napkins,” she wrote online, “so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”

Claire Valdez (NY-7) and Brad Lander (NY-10) are cut from the same cloth. Grant citizenship and voting rights to illegal aliens? Yep. Seize the property of “bad landlords”? You betcha. Eliminate private health insurance and make taxpayers pony up for all transgender procedures? But of course. Abolish ICE, forgive the $2 trillion of student-loan debt, pack the Supreme Court? Can you doubt it?

A standard option in all current models of socialism is a ferocious anti-Israel sentiment fed, although you are not supposed to notice this, through a noxious current of apparent anti-Semitism. “Israel doesn’t exist,” Chevalier tells her followers, while all three support Hamas and think that Israel’s actions to defend itself in Gaza count as “genocide.”

What will be the upshot or outcome of these political perturbations? The disclaimer found on many financial statements offers a useful reminder: past results are no guarantee of future performance. A persistent gremlin affecting our prognostications is the temptation to extrapolate simply from current trends to future realities. It is easy to discount the presence of countervailing forces.

True socialism has never been tried:  Mamdani Is Ignoring 40 Centuries of Economic Lessons.

I get what you mean here, but saying "the socialists" will have the "new ideas" is like saying "the Shakers have all the fresh thinking." Socialism is not new. The label is about 2 centuries old, give or take. The idea is thousands of years old. There's not a single major idea… https://t.co/e3tqtK9PQP

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) July 1, 2026

Jonah’s tweet concludes, “There’s not a single major idea proposed by the DSA crowd that wasn’t an old idea before I was born. From price controls and rent-freezes, to wealth taxes, or shunning Jews. It’s all old, old hat. You can agree with it. Or admire it’s newfound energy or something. But the ideas are old, tried, and failed.”

Wobblies tossing bombs at Pinkertons, Pullman Car workers singing Woody Guthrie tunes, wildcat strikes at waistcoat factories…

Yeah, that century-old Industrial Age Utopianism is filled with “new ideas.” https://t.co/CXURg7A1vr

— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) July 1, 2026

Related:

"Here we go, get ready" is my favorite part. @sircalebhammer is doing the lord's work exposing idiocy. https://t.co/gaHL91T1FF

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) July 2, 2026

THE MICROCOSM WITH A MICRO AUDIENCE:

It's almost like WNBA is a microcosm that represents everything that is totally fucked up and everything that is right, re race relations in America.

I'd add there are women in WNBA who appear to have bigger balls than most of the men in professional sports. https://t.co/owiDpiXTee

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) July 2, 2026

TNSTAAFL:

Biden allowed you to make smaller student loan payments, but guess what! You were still accruing interest!

So he basically found a way to get MORE money out of student borrowers long-term, and progressives actually cheered him on for it

lol

lmao, even pic.twitter.com/mqxIMGnXry

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) July 1, 2026

FASTER, PLEASE:

DEPORT https://t.co/9c0O1qEMlz

— Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 (@RobSchneider) July 1, 2026

Besides, Conan tells me that Haiti is a much nicer place than Massachusetts:

THE “WARMTH OF COLLECTIVISM” WILL ALSO BE “WARM TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE:”

Woke 2.0 is coming. It's starting already.

Rather than foregrounding identity politics, it will push:

1) Affordability (Marxist materialism);
2) Anti-corruption (ironic but an excuse to go after Trump);
3) Anti-Israel (pro-Palestine).

It will be warm to political violence.

— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) July 2, 2026

RED DAWN:

The focus on Israel in the story that these far-left candidates are winning Democratic primaries obscures the glaring warning sign that actual Communists are going to be in Congress. This isn't about Israel, this is about revolution.

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) July 1, 2026

THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION: Who Counts?

Pete Buttigieg and his family should never have endured a malicious false report that brought police and Child Protective Services to their home, temporarily separated him from his young children, and forced his family through a needless ordeal. Authorities quickly determined the allegations were baseless.

The bipartisan condemnation that followed was appropriate. Political leaders from across the country spoke with one voice. Commentators expressed outrage. The message was unmistakable: there are lines that should never be crossed.

They were right.

But watching the response unfold left me asking a question I have carried since my daughter Katie was killed.

Why does our political class know exactly how to respond when one of its own is harmed, yet struggle to summon the same moral urgency when ordinary Americans are actually buried?

That is when I realized America has created a hierarchy of compassion.

It is not a hierarchy of human worth. Every life has equal value. It is a hierarchy of political attention, and in modern America, attention often determines whether anyone asks the questions that might prevent the next tragedy.

Read the whole thing.

Related:

The thing about Buttigieg is that he structured his entire life around becoming an acceptable white male Democrat candidate for POTUS. Ivy League, non combat military, homosexual, gay marriage – then he deliberately adopted black children.

This is so weird it’s disqualifying. https://t.co/ZupP0f0d42

— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) July 1, 2026

HOW TO SPOT A DEMSOC:

Democrats can gaslight Americans all they want, but history is a great teacher.

🎥 How to Spot a Communist, 2026: pic.twitter.com/07BtLgYkPN

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 1, 2026

MAMDANI WASN’T KIDDING ABOUT HIS “WARMTH OF COLLECTIVISM” SHTICK:

Reminder that the reason that New York City is struggling to power its air conditioners is a Democratic Party crusade against the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant that finally led to its shutdown in 2020, which led to a massive rise in fossil fuel usage to power the city https://t.co/WLoOjKBqfs pic.twitter.com/jtzvzq3pnD

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) July 1, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM CHICAGO, THAT HOTBED OF CONSERVATISM: David Axelrod Gets Brutal Lesson In Blue City Governance After Finding Man Passed Out In Chicago Heat.

Former President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist and CNN analyst David Axelrod alleged that Democrat-run Chicago, Illinois, ignored an unconscious man in the heat and suggested that city could have done more.

Axelrod said he was walking past the Art Institute of Chicago on July 1 when he saw a homeless-looking elderly man unconscious on the museum’s stone front steps, according to a post on X. He later added that the city’s facing a real-feel temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit. AccuWeather listed an official temperature of 97 degrees Fahrenheit and a real feel temperature of 106 degrees as of publication.

Concerned, Axelrod said he asked the museum’s security guard about the issue. She allegedly told him that she had already woken him three times suggesting that he move into the shade, but that he had continued to refuse.

Not satisfied, Axelrod said he dialed 911. After he explained the situation, the operator allegedly said, “Well, is he ASKING for help?”

After replying that he hadn’t, the female operator allegedly replied, “Well I’m not going to send anyone.”

“So the man remained, passed out in the blazing noon sun,” Axelrod said. “I guess that’s how the City of Chicago deals with such situations.”

Yes, that’s the Chicago Way, as a famous fictitious Irish-American policeman with a suspiciously Scottish accent would say:

*inserts a chart showing how Chicago has been run by Democrats exclusively since before David was born* https://t.co/vSxsL6Ueu8

— RBe (@RBPundit) July 1, 2026

Axelrod was born in 1955; Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931. Insert hot dog guy meme here: