IT’S COME TO THIS:

Chinese people are trolling Europeans by posting videos on social media showing that even their pigs have air conditioning, while many Europeans can’t because of government rules. pic.twitter.com/k4yNJKRArc

— Saffron Sniper (@Saffron_Sniper1) June 28, 2026

SONY DELETES 551 STUDIOCANAL MOVIES PLAYSTATION OWNERS PAID FOR:

The titles all come from StudioCanal, the distributor behind Terminator 2, Total Recall, Rambo: First Blood, The Deer Hunter, Bridget Jones’s Diary, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Cliffhanger.

Anyone who hit “buy” on one of them will open their library that morning and find a hole where it used to be. PlayStation’s notice states it without apology: “You will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.”

The justification Sony offers runs to six words, “due to our content licensing agreements.”

A licensing deal between Sony and StudioCanal expired or shifted, and the people who paid are the ones losing their films over it. None of them signed that contract and none gets a vote in it.

X user somatyk surfaced the news on June 25, posting the notification they’d received. The message signed off with, “Click here for a full list of affected titles that will no longer be supported. Thank you.” Sony has since reproduced the same warning, and the full roster of 551 titles, on the PlayStation website.

Nobody rented these movies. The store put a “buy” button next to them, charged the purchase price, and dropped them into a library it called yours. Sony can empty that library the moment a contract somewhere upstream changes, and the terms of service you scrolled past on first boot already say you agreed to this.

If the movie case feels abstract, the games industry just made the same point with its biggest release in over a decade. GTA 6 arrives November 19, and the boxed copy you can buy at Walmart or GameStop contains no disc. Take-Two confirmed it in a press release: “The physical version of Grand Theft Auto VI, containing a download code inside the box, will be available starting November 12, 2026 to support pre-loading.”

As Steve would say, “Buy. Physical. Media.”

A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Los Angeles man arrested for shooting BB gun at naked bike riders taking over the city.

Well, “Pride” month is going out with a bang this year.

A “Naked Bike Ride” took over LA and there were arrests made. Not of the public perverts, but of a man who decided to voice his opposition in a legally dubious manner.

NEW: Los Angeles man arrested after shooting naked people with a BB gun as they rode their bikes through downtown Los Angeles.

Hundreds of people were spotted riding without clothes for the World Naked Bike Ride.

LAPD says a man dressed in all black riding a scooter started… pic.twitter.com/6jw4ZUjTCM

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 29, 2026

Assault with a deadly weapon for pegging a couple of naked dudes in the middle of a large city with a BB gun.

If you’re a public nudist riding your bike in LA you get a police escort. If you’re a normal dude with a BB gun you get a different type of police escort.

Exit quote:

Anarchotyranny is when sexual deviants are allowed to break the law while police stand by to protect them from any consequences from outraged citizens https://t.co/fpGJssyZhP

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) June 29, 2026

Spencer Pratt, call your office! You too, Adam Carolla:

(Classical reference in headline.)

ANOTHER MAJOR CABLE TV PROVIDER IS PREPARING FOR BANKRUPTCY TOMORROW:

EchoStar Corporation’s satellite television subsidiary Dish DBS is set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as Tuesday, marking a significant step in the company’s long-running effort to restructure its heavy debt load amid declining traditional pay-TV subscribers and ongoing regulatory challenges, according to the Wall Street Journal. The popular satellite TV service providing access to cable TV networks has struggled to find a way to be profitable in the world of cord-cutting. The move, which has been anticipated for months, would allow the Englewood, Colorado-based company to implement a pre-negotiated deleveraging plan while seeking to stabilize its operations in a rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape.

EchoStar, led by founder and chairman Charlie Ergen, has faced mounting financial pressure for years. The company carries approximately $25 billion in debt across its various entities, including its core satellite television businesses under the Dish Network and Sling TV brands, as well as its wireless operations through Boost Mobile. Subscriber losses in the traditional linear television segment have accelerated as consumers increasingly shift toward streaming services, cord-cutting trends, and alternative entertainment options. This erosion of the customer base has squeezed revenue and heightened the urgency for a comprehensive financial reset.

Other than for live sports, who is still watching legacy television?

In the age of 500 TV networks, the % of eyeball-time devoted to NFL is simply mindboggling. Pretty much the only mass audience TV programming left. https://t.co/B9UGyY48TO

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 6, 2023

ABE GREENWALD: The Queering of the Purge.

[Scott] Wiener is the Democratic front-runner looking to replace Nancy Pelosi in the House. He’s also a gay, pro-trans leftist who’s described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide and called for the U.S. to stop giving military aid to Israel.

So he attended the trans march, as he does every year, to stand with those he thought of as his people.

But Wiener is Jewish, and he took a bit too long in deciding that he needed to mimic faithfully the hardcore anti-Israel monomaniacs. So they’re now teaching him an important lesson: A Jew who shows any ambivalence about destroying the Jewish state will not be tolerated by the left.

What was supposed to be a festive stop along the way to a Pride Shabbat with a trans rabbi became something else.

Wiener’s chief harasser at the march was one Dimitry Yakoushkin, whom the New York Times describes as a “49-year-old sex and intimacy coach.” (The Times also generously provides a link to Yakoushkin’s website, where we learn that he is “a Sexological Bodyworker and trained in the Hakomi Method – a body-based, mindful experiential therapy method that helps clients get in touch with and live from their deepest self.”)

As the clip opens, Yakoushkin begins by telling Wiener how much he admires the latter’s stance on trans issues. And then he gives voice to his deepest self, yelling that Wiener is “terrible on Gaza” and does “not belong here.” An aggressive crowd—including one individual in keffiyeh and gold hotpants—steadily gathers and contributes to the abuse. They call Wiener a “genocidal piece of shit” who’s under the control of “Zionist handlers,” and so on. Within a minute, Wiener—and by extension Israel—has become the focus of the gathering.

“Scott, I want to support someone who’s so positive on trans rights,” Yakoushkin pleads toward the clip’s end. “But you’re a piece of shit on Gaza. How could you do that? How could you do that? How could you betray queers?” Another sees Wiener off with this: “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of shit.”

As “The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome” account notes in a lengthy essay on X, “The people who spent years telling Jews ‘just be anti-Zionist and you’ll be fine’ are now demonstrating, in high definition, that it was always a lie. The alligator was never going to be satisfied with table scraps. It wants the whole Jew.”

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 1943, ALEX: How German trains became the shame of a nation.

When the 10pm service of Berlin’s U2 metro line failed to set off from the station, its frazzled driver finally snapped.

“Get away from the doors!” he bellowed, leaping out to berate a young woman as she pawed at the broken, flashing-red buttons on the side of the train. “Don’t touch the doors!”

Unbeknownst to the driver, who seemed to think the woman’s button-mashing had caused the breakdown, Germany’s entire rail system had just been crippled by a software glitch.

For the next two hours, hundreds of thousands of Germans were left stranded on platforms or sweltering in packed carriages as the metro, intercity and commuter networks all failed at once on Tuesday.

In some regions the delays lasted even longer, with passengers forced to seek out hotel rooms or sleep on benches in the train station.

You might think that travel chaos on this scale in Germany, a nation famed for its love of efficiency and punctuality, is unusual – but you would be sorely mistaken.

After decades of underinvestment, Germany’s crumbling rail network has become a source of national humiliation for a country that was once the gold standard in engineering.

Speaking of humiliating, Col. Hans Landa vants to know, are you are hiding any wallboxes under ze floor? Ve have ways of finding out! German State Media Campaign Against Air Conditioning as Country Faces Record Summer Heat.

Related:

They really think this is what’s happening https://t.co/loaBWnes75 pic.twitter.com/2CAUhE5PtE

— Degen CPA (@DrewVento) June 29, 2026

UPDATE: It’s good to be in the nomenklatura:

Socialism is never for the socialists https://t.co/Jxjo5GQNWk

— Fusilli Spock (@awstar11) June 29, 2026

THE COMPOSITE CHARACTER PRESIDENTIAL CENTER:

The Tablet sage [David Samuels] was on to it at last. Barack Obama is a fictitious character, and in 2023, he was still running the country under the hapless Joe Biden and was responsible for the disaster the nation was living through at the time. From the hideously ugly Obama Presidential Center, the Obama is doubtless hoping for Bidens all the way down—Democratic presidents that he can control moving forward. This is more like the “guided democracy” of Indonesia, where young Barry Soetoro was raised, than anything in the American tradition.

As [David] Garrow noted in Rising Star, the former president, born in Hawaii in 1961, was raised in Indonesia as the stepson of Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian student his mother Ann Dunham married in 1965. On the other hand, the Kenyan Barack Obama, Sr., in all his writing and documents from 1958 to 1964, mentions nothing about an American wife and son. So it seems POTUS44, in preparing his book on his father, never viewed the archive at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York where Sr.’s writings are housed.

For the fictional character who became president, America was smothered in oppression and racism until he arrived on the scene.  He promptly  canceled missile defense for U.S. allies Poland and the Czech Republic. Fidel Castro was regarded by him as a “singular figure” with “enormous impact,” and the white Stalinist dictator never did anything Obama chose publicly to condemn. The Fort Hood mass murder by “soldier of Allah” Nidal Hasan was only considered “workplace violence,” not terrorism or even gun violence. And so on.

The “Affordable Care Act,” which David Garrow regarded as “in large part, a fraud,” was part of Obama’s fundamental transformation of the USA into a nation where the people get only what the government wants them to have. If the people therefore regard the Obama as the true divider-in-chief it would be hard to blame them.

As the Obama Presidential Center opens, in the run-up to the nation’s 250^th birthday, prominent Democrats are panting for socialism, which has proved itself a failure. The “remarkable story” of the first fictional character president is still in progress, and that could spell disaster for the people in 2028 and beyond. So as Trump says, we’ll have to see what happens.

Related: Bill Maher calls Mamdani-backed socialist [Darializa Avila Chevalier] ‘patient zero’ of the ‘woke mind virus.’

As nutty as Chevalier’s worldview is (to the point where even CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is calling her out), as Yoda would say, “No, there is another.”

ROB LONG: What I Learned From Jimmy Burrows.

On my third day in show business, I went to Stage 25 on the Paramount Studios lot to get a cup of coffee and a doughnut. It was January 1990, and I had just been hired as a staff writer on the long-running hit comedy Cheers, and so far I had made two important career discoveries.

First: that every working soundstage has a table somewhere groaning with snacks and treats. It’s called the craft services table, even though it often sprawls across two or three tables, a deli-sized refrigerator, and a bank of toaster ovens. The entertainment industry is filled with nervous eaters—and no one is more nervous than a newly hired staff writer on a 10-week contract—so this area is replenished hourly with pastries and bagels and mini sandwiches, and it’s where everyone associated with the production self-medicates with sugary carbohydrates, high-fat dairy, and gossip.

The second thing I discovered was this: No one in show business will ever teach you anything, or explain what’s going on, or patiently show you the ropes. If you’re new and want to learn something, go get a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the craft services table and hide in a corner and watch. This is what I was doing on my third day in show business when I watched my boss, James Burrows, sitting at the piano on the set—You remember that, don’t you? Upstage left, in the alcove of the bar under the stairs?—and he was idly playing “I’ll Know” from Guys and Dolls. The rest of the cast and crew were on their mid-morning break, so it was just me and James Burrows—everyone called him Jimmy, but I didn’t feel like I could do that on my third day in show business—in the empty Cheers bar with a doughnut from craft services.

As Burrows himself wrote on the brilliant design of the Cheers set, “strong attention was paid to detail. More than anything else, we wanted class and warmth. We hired Richard Sylbert, an Academy Award–winning art director, to make the set look as beautiful and inviting as possible, since the characters were drinking what many in America still considered ‘devil’s brew.’ Richard was very dignified, often decked out in a safari jacket while smoking a pipe. He had never worked on a television production before. He asked for a salary of 500 dollars for every show produced, which was unheard of. I told Paramount, ‘Pay him, even if you have to take it out of our share.’”

JOHN PODHORETZ: How the Left Abandoned the Jews.

[Jesse] Jackson ran again in 1988, in a crowded field in which he was, again, the only genuinely exciting candidate. The New York primary was in April, and the mayor of the city was Ed Koch, who had taken particular offense to Jackson’s characterization of Zionism as “a kind of poisonous weed that is choking Judaism.” In the heat of campaigning for his chosen candidate, Al Gore, the ever-unconstrained Koch declared that “Jews and other supporters of Israel would have to be crazy to vote for Jackson.”

A firestorm erupted—but this time it wasn’t about what Jackson had said but rather about what Koch had said. The columnist Richard Cohen declared, “Jews don’t ‘have to be crazy’ to vote for Jesse Jackson. They can make up their own minds on that. But they have to be crazy to listen to Ed Koch.” There were myriad such comments. According to reporter Roger Simon, Gore called Jackson every night for a week to apologize. Koch later said he had gotten “carried away,” but it was too late for him. A “Stop Koch” movement, whose purpose was to deny him a fourth term as mayor in the next election, was born out of his words—and succeeded when Koch lost to David Dinkins in the 1989 primary.

What this revealed was that, Hymietown or no Hymietown, Jackson had achieved a sacrosanct position in the Democratic firmament as the most influential and popular black political presence in the country.

Jackson’s strength derived almost entirely from his domination of the black vote—polling showed that 19 out of 20 black New Yorkers voted for him. But he had also made significant inroads with leftists, many of them Jews, whose views of Israel had turned sour after the 1967 Six-Day War. Once viewed as a righteous anti-colonial cause, Zionism was reframed by radical thinkers in the 1970s as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians—the idea that gave rise to the notorious 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Conventional American politicians in both parties loathed the resolution—and under U.S. pressure in the wake of the end of the Cold War, it was rescinded in December 1991. But the animating idea behind the resolution had already gained purchase in academic journals and university departments. In 1989, UCLA professor Kimberlé Crenshaw devised the theory of “intersectionality,” according to which all political oppression stemmed from an imbalance between the powerful and powerless. Its application to the Middle East conflict was obvious: Israel was powerful, the Palestinians powerless, and therefore Israel was, by definition, an oppressor.

It became the most influential sociopolitical theory of our time. And it dovetailed nicely with the dominant book about the modern Middle East. That was Edward Said’s Orientalism, a jeremiad against the imposition of Western ideas on non-Western cultures. Said was an English professor at Columbia by day but moonlighted as an official of the Palestine National Council, and was a critic of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the left.

The ideas (and disciples) of Crenshaw and Said were disseminated throughout the academy in the 1990s and 2000s. They became the default view in political science and Middle Eastern studies departments and on tenure committees. Those who preached the intersectional anti-Zionist gospel had the loudest voices on campus and the greatest influence on the college-educated Americans who came their way. Even as the Clinton and Bush administrations were widely viewed as friendly to Israel, and even though the halls of Congress were populated by friends of Israel, the next generation of American political activists was being trained in darker and uglier ideas.

In the mid-2000s, campuses across the country were suddenly lit up by the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” movement, an idea conceived in 2005 in a Palestinian document called “the BDS Call.” It sought to isolate Israel by excluding its scholars and scholarship and forbidding the use of university financial resources in any way that might be seen as aiding the Jewish state. The plan was a direct lift from the anti-apartheid movement that helped bring down the white supremacist government in South Africa in the 1980s.

The anti-apartheid cause had been a key feature of all political conversation on campuses in the 1970s and 1980s. BDS sought to duplicate its success and build on it, and it found unexpected allies in its efforts. The idea was immediately taken up by former president Jimmy Carter, who believed his 1980 defeat had been partly the result of an evildoing Zionist cabal working on behalf of Israel.

Carter published a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006. This was, in its own way, an earthquake, not only because Carter was a former U.S. president but because he had been one of the negotiators of the Camp David Accords of 1979, the first peace deal ever struck between Israel and an Arab country (Egypt). That same year saw the release of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by two august political-science professors who claimed that this itty-bitty country had come to control Capitol Hill by the power of Jewish money. John Mearsheimer taught at the University of Chicago. Stephen Walt was tenured at Harvard.

As Jay Nordlinger wrote in his classic 2002 “Carterpalooza” column, “No one quite realizes just how passionately anti-Israel Carter [was]. William Safire has reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if he had had a second term, Carter would have sold Israel down the river.”

TOMORROW’S FLOUNCES TODAY: CNN star Anderson Cooper told colleagues he doesn’t want to work for Bari Weiss: report.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Activists Harass “Progressive” Politician Scott Wiener over Israel and Gaza.

One of the people yelling at Wiener at the march implored him to redeem himself by saying something on the spot to denounce Israel. (The guy who shouted at him at the bar did the same thing.) This is typical of left-wing mobs, which tend to demand ritual acts of obeisance, whether it’s taking a knee during the BLM riots or wearing a cockade during the French Revolution.

Someone also asked how Wiener could have done this to San Francisco, as though his political crime of not condemning the Jewish state in lurid enough terms had done concrete harm to a city that is 7,500 miles from the Gaza war.

Wiener put out a statement appropriately calling out his treatment. In his rapid change of opinion on the question of genocide in Gaza after the primary debate, though, Wiener tried to appease the mob. As a Jew with a suspect record on a litmus test issue for the left, he’s going to have to pander more or surely face continued bullying and intimidation.

Exit question: Spencer Pratt to Scott Wiener: ‘Remember Calling Me McBigot?’ — As Senator Gets Kicked Out of Trans March. “How does it feel now that the Frankenstein you created is coming for you? Every stupid communist learns this history lesson the hard way. Enjoy!”

Hey, Wiener guy! Remember when you called me a "McBigot"? How does it feel now that the Frankenstein you created is coming for you? Every stupid communist learns this history lesson the hard way. Enjoy! https://t.co/BYhKjn9URC pic.twitter.com/cCCr2u2PBp

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 27, 2026

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Driving the original supercar: Lamborghini Miura at 60. The mid-engined masterpiece caused a sensation in 1966, but how has it stood the test of time?

WAIT, I THOUGHT NET NEUTRALITY AND GLOBAL COOLING, WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHAOS HAD KILLED EVERYONE ALREADY:

We pointed this out with global mortality data a weeks ago – but this is better and more region/state specific. https://t.co/KzjzT50NfU

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) June 29, 2026

JOHN NOLTE: Citizen Vigilante Review: Cathartic Rebuttal to the Amoral One Battle After Another.

The left has their pro-terrorist One Battle After Another, an overlong, mediocre, $100 million studio movie told by a major director (Paul Thomas Anderson) using one of the world’s biggest movie stars (Leonardo DiCaprio). The result? It flopped at the box office and was still predictably showered with unearned critical praise and major Oscar wins.

Basically, One Battle After Another is angry that America enforces the law by deporting illegal immigrants and demands violence against the government to make it stop.

Today we have a rebuttal, and a pretty effective one… Best of all, it’s deliciously subversive.

Citizen Vigilante is a briskly-paced (at 89 minutes) low-budget exploitation movie told by a director who was long ago written off as a joke (Uwe Boll), using an unjustly disgraced star (Armie Hammer). The result? Despite the best efforts of left-wing censors, a brilliant guerrilla campaign has already driven it into the national conversation. Elon Musk then did what he does best: overturned the whole enchilada by releasing it to everyone for free on X.

Basically, Citizen Vigilante is angry that European governments agree with One Battle After Another in that they refuse to enforce the law against the millions of unvetted migrants they imported who have brought their appalling and dangerous Third World values with them.

Let me tell you: Boll isn’t screwing around. His righteous fury against what the government has done to Europe, and especially its women and girls, flames across every scene. That’s one reason the movie works. Another reason it works is that Boll is telling the truth. The primary reason it works is that Boll is the only one telling the truth.

For all its flaws, Citizen Vigilante does what all good movies do: it delivers. Watching a movie where the truth about migrant crime and the government’s obscene acceptance of it is not only spoken out loud but openly dealt with is something beyond cathartic.

Boll’s movie is currently number one in purchases at Amazon Prime Video:

Earlier: Rod Dreher on The Fascist Film That Plays As Prophecy.

RIDE THE ENVIRO-AUTOMOTIVE MOBIUS LOOP!

HAHAHAHAHA https://t.co/K2dpdZIwHO

— varifrank (@varifrank) June 26, 2026

I’m so old, I can remember when Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York City (the past really is a foreign country, kids) reversed the equation: Stupid Mayor Tricks: Bloomberg Pimps His SUV With Window A.C. Unit. “In April 2009, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill giving NYC the toughest laws against vehicular idling, with stiff fines for repeat offenders. Three months later, AP reporters caught the mayor repeatedly flouting the law, with his chauffeur and security detail sometimes leaving their engines running for an hour while waiting for the mayor. Bloomberg had to apologize, but ever since he’s presumably had a team of engineers working around the clock to come up with a solution to keep his SUV cool when he’s not in it. Well, they finally had a major breakthrough, and yesterday they did some beta-testing!”

UPDATE:

Meanwhile the UK government pic.twitter.com/vTIMEBpNrZ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 28, 2026

AZTEC BATMAN CONTINUES TO KICK ASS!

Mexico has its own Batman. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/luXJlzgK0O

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) June 28, 2026

(Classical reference in headline.)

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD BOLDLY GOES WHERE CHRIS MATTHEWS HAS GONE BEFORE!

pic.twitter.com/vBxXLdAPEE

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 28, 2026

To be fair, this headline was already true 14 years ago: Chris Matthews and MSNBC Now Claim the Word ‘Chicago’ Is Racist.

—NewsBusters, August 30th, 2012.

I TOLD YOU SO, YOU F***KING FOOLS: ‘In the End I Was Right:’ How a Harvard Historian Helped Reagan Topple Soviet Communism.

Fortunately for America and for those under the jackboot of Soviet Communism, there were some who saw past the propaganda to the cruel truth. Among them was [Richard] Pipes, a historian of Russia who also served the U.S. government during the Ford and Reagan administrations.

After Pipes first visited the Soviet Union, in 1957, he wrote a colleague: “All the buildings on the streets were in a state of disrepair, the gateways crumbling, the façades patched up, the courtyards invisible for the mud which covered them. … Everything made the impression of being decayed or dead, even the people walking on the streets, somberly and paying no attention to each other. … I found it difficult to suppress the tears as I viewed about me the effects of 40 years of Soviet rule which had exacted such suffering from the population.”

Pipes later recalled it: “in Leningrad everyone looked gloomy and did not look at each other but seemed deep in their own thoughts. Because one could be executed under Stalin merely for an association with someone deemed guilty of counterrevolution, the only reasonable defense was to have nothing to do with other people.”

Daly quotes Pipes in 1996 summing up his own contribution: “Whereas the profession as a whole regarded the Soviet Union as an essentially popular and stable regime, I saw it as an unpopular and weak regime, which we ought to press very hard. That was very much a minority view, but I think that in the end I was right. Sound, stable popular regimes don’t collapse suddenly, as the Soviet Union did.”

The preference cascaded rather spectacularly back then, much to the chagrin of the DNC-MSM.

(Classical reference in headline.)

OLD AND BUSTED: Republicans Pounce!

The New Hotness? Republicans Flounce!

I AM MAD BECAUSE THE PROBLEMS DECADES IN THE MAKING THAT REALLY TROUBLED ME HAVE NOT BEEN INSTANTLY SOLVED BY DECREE DESPITE THE RESISTENCE OF THE LEFT SO I’M GOING TO GIVE UP AND ALLOW THE LEFT TO WIN. https://t.co/owCsH0dwwd

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 28, 2026

ENDER’S GAME, WITH UKRAINIAN SUBTITLES:

A whole new level..

Russians complaining that Ukrainian Forces are now outsourcing drone operations to gamers all over the world by connecting hundreds of drones to a virtual server and inviting skilled drone operators to take out battalions, with cash prizes awarded for each. pic.twitter.com/rALEKlmbjE

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) June 28, 2026

LET NEW YORK SUFFER:

Whatever the case, passive or active, the people of New York voted for all of this or tolerated its support. The sane people are gone, having fled the march of communism for greener pastures.

So, with that in mind, and the fact that people have not only received ample warning of the destructive nature of radical leftist policies, let the city have what it so desperately wants: let New York suffer.

California is going broke – the coming crush of pensions and the “compassion” in the form of welfare and health care benefits for illegal aliens are going to overwhelm the system and be a foot to the groin of their economy. Good. The same goes for New York.

I have zero interest in helping anyone who hits themselves in the head with a frying pan while complaining about a headache. Once I tell you that, you might want to stop hitting yourself in the head, and you don’t, I’ve lost all interest in your pain or the damage it’s doing.

New York City can die. There was a time when the fate of the economy of New York was the fate of the US economy. Not anymore.

The financial and stock economies are so decentralized now, with many brokers working remotely in places like Florida, that “Wall Street” is now more of an address than anything tangible. Let New York get a giant dose of what they voted for.

As Ed Koch was quoted as saying when he lost his primary against David Dinkins, “The people have spoken, and now they must be punished.” (And boy, were they.)

BUTTIGIEG SEPARATED FROM CHILDREN AFTER BEING TARGETED BY FALSE CPS REPORT: “Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he was briefly separated from his 4-year-old twins after an anonymous caller filed a false report with Child Protective Services concerning his family. Buttigieg wrote about the swatting-like incident in a lengthy Substack post on Friday, detailing his encounter with Michigan State Police.”

Related:

Amy Coney Barrett was swatted last month. Neither Pete Buttigieg nor Mark commented on it. The New York Times did not do a story on it.

I like Mark, but the truth is the only thing new about this story is that it happened to a Democrat. It’s ho-hum and commonplace for… https://t.co/zCD1t3pni9

— Scalito (@Legally_Italian) June 27, 2026

UPDATE: Questions asked:

Why am I expected to assume the allegation was false? Is that the rule? Because to be the rule it would need to apply to conservatives too. Does it?

That’s rhetorical. https://t.co/yovqD6drgp

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 28, 2026

DATA REPUBLICAN: The grants behind David French’s convenient theology.

In March 2026, David French wrote in the New York Times that James Talarico is “one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.” I challenged him on this, and he blocked me for it.

Talarico has cited the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as scripture in a sermon. He told Ezra Klein that all religions “point to the same truth.” He said on the Texas House floor that “God is nonbinary.” He preached that Matthew 25 tells us “exactly how you and I are going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick. Nothing about going to church.”

Every one of these is a doctrinal claim. Every one contradicts historic Christian orthodoxy.

French addressed none of them. When Allie Beth Stuckey pressed him on April 17, 2026 — “these aren’t policy positions, David, these are theological claims” — French said: “I’m just not willing to say James Talarico is not a Christian… I’m just not writing these people out of Christianity.”

Fair enough.

But here is French in August 2024, endorsing Kamala Harris in the New York Times: “There are many churches and Christian leaders who are now more culturally Trumpian than culturally Christian.”

That’s a claim about what Christianity is — and it excludes.

David French won’t question one man’s Christianity when that man cites Gnostic fan fiction as scripture. But David French will question the Christianity of entire denominations when they vote wrong.

Related: Where Are the Bill Kristols and Michael Steeles on the Democrat Side Today?

When the Bushie Republicans were turned out of power in the GOP by the MAGA crowd, many of them updated their belief systems to meet the new reality, and several profited from the change. Others delighted in their obsolescence, mostly because they found paymasters willing to make it worth their while. And that’s how we got the Bill Kristols, David Frenches, Michael Steeles, and the Lincoln Projects of the world, who for the last 10 years have bitched and complained and performatively declared alliances with the Left.

What now of the Clinton Democrats? Why are we not seeing a similar turning of the coats?

What say you, James Carville? For years, you’ve screeched at the Hard Left and complained that they would destroy your party. Well, now that you’ve been proven correct, now that you had the power to stop it, are you going to knuckle under to the DSA? Are you going to champion a third party to replace the loons of the Hard Left? Will you say, as some of the NeverTrumpers said, that your home must be with the GOP until the contagion on the Left burns itself out?

We won’t hold our breath.

For about 60 years now, you could make a very good living in the Northeast Corridor as a columnist who appears on the Sunday talking head shows as a would be Republican who somehow could just never seem to find actual GOP politicians suitable enough to vote for. With the exception of one or two cable TV news channels, the reverse has never been true.

As for rank and file Dems:

It's OK. You'll be made to accept their rise to power. Just know you were silent for far too long (and had plenty of company) https://t.co/B5ACdvI1A4

— Christian Toto (@HollywoodInToto) June 28, 2026

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THERE. How It Started:

Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler’s June purge, for instance, could not have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of back-handed admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe.

When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.

Meanwhile England, together with the rest of the world, is changing. And like everything else it can change only in certain directions, which up to a point can be foreseen. That is not to say that the future is fixed, merely that certain alternatives are possible and others not. A seed may grow or not grow, but at any rate a turnip seed never grows into a parsnip. It is therefore of the deepest importance to try and determine what England is, before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that are happening.

—George Orwell, “England, Your England,” 1940.

How It’s Going:

The King’s official job is to protect faith “within the multi-faith nation”, under a newly published palace definition of the monarch’s role.

The King, who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, will “protect the space for Faith” under a redrafted job description from Buckingham Palace.

Published in the annual review of the Royal family’s finances, the Sovereign Grant report 2025-26, it changes the description of the King’s role as “Head of Nation” from last year, when he was the “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith”.

This year it goes further to specify: “His Majesty is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation.”

Before the King’s coronation, there was debate over whether the King would choose to be “Defender of Faith” in the plural, rather than “the Faith” as his Christian ancestors had been. In the event, he chose the traditional wording.

But he has made interfaith dialogue one of the cornerstones of his working life, both as Prince of Wales and now as King. He speaks regularly of the Abrahamic faiths and undertakes engagements with the Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Orthodox, and other religious communities in Britain and around the world.

—“King to ‘protect multi-faith nation’ in revised definition of monarchy,” the London Telegraph, Friday.

Twenty minutes into the future?

He's going to announce his conversion to Islam. https://t.co/9c06yYiq0j

— @instapundit (@instapundit) June 28, 2026

MONTY PYTHON AND THE MEANING OF SUDDEN RUSSIAN DEATH SYNDROME:

Is there one particular window that they are all falling out of, or it just any old window that happens to be large enough https://t.co/iuATJbHdvr

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 27, 2026