GLENN SUGGESTED THIS MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO: Mike Lee Proposes Issuing Letters of Marque.

FAIL, BRITANNIA: Navy bosses rename HMS Agincourt to avoid annoying the French.

The government has been accused of “craven political correctness” after it approved a Royal Navy request to change the name of HMS Agincourt to avoid offending the French.

In 2018 the Astute-class submarine became the fleet’s sixth vessel to be named after the 1415 English victory over the French in the Battle of Agincourt as part of the Hundred Years’ War.

The decision has also prompted anger from former Tory defence secretaries, who called the decision “sacrilege”.

n a social post late on Sunday evening, the Royal Navy announced the ship would be renamed HMS Achilles, subject to approval by the King. It added the decision had been made “in light of the 80th anniversaries this year of VE and VJ Day”, when many French and British troops fought alongside each other.

Spoiler: You can’t avoid annoying the French, particularly if you’re British. We make things work, anyway.

SCOTT PINSKER: The Left’s Worst Nightmare: Second Acts, Donald Trump, and ‘Chimps with Machine Guns’ “If you wanna be a big shot in Big Tech, the secret is to be like Nancy Kerrigan.”

DEMOCRATS AT WORK: “Death by a thousand cuts”: Colorado’s restaurant industry in crisis.

The big picture: The food industry in Denver and across Colorado has been battered over the past five years — and it’s adding up.

Rising costs for food, rent and property taxes combined with shrinking profit margins, growing regulatory pressures and budget-conscious diners are all pushing restaurants to the brink, industry experts tell us.

By the numbers: More than 200 restaurants closed statewide in 2024, per the Colorado Sun. Denver alone accounted for 82% of those losses, according to the Colorado Restaurant Association (CRA).

In the past three years, the city has lost 22% of its restaurants, the Denver Post reports. Some of the most recent closures include longstanding institutions like Fruition, Lao Wang Noodle House and Melita’s.

What they’re saying: “We’re in this kind of perfect storm moment,” CRA spokesperson Denise Mickelsen tells us. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

Zoom in: One major pain point is Denver’s increased tipped minimum wage, which is creating ripple effects industrywide. Local restaurant consultant John Imbergamo says it disproportionately affects back-of-house staff and forces price hikes that turn diners off.

You don’t say.

To top it off, the state assembly in Denver has a set of restaurant-unfriendly bills waiting in the wings.

IT GIVES MEANING TO UNHAPPY LIVES: The Left Never Runs Out of Reasons to Complain.

A HELPFUL (AND SPICY) GUIDE FROM BATTLESWARM: Jeremiad To The Democrats The First: Abandon The F***ing Idiot Transsexual Woke Bullshit. “Because I’m such a helpful, big-hearted fellow, I’m going to start a series where I tell Democrats how to find their way out of their current slough of despond. But since I’m so very, very tired of their useless shit, and of them making the same mistakes over and over again, I’m going to give said advice in a way that brutally goosesteps all over their precious feel-feels, ensuring that they will stop reading it in a fit of blind rage, which will in turn make them incapable of learning from it, ensuring that they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.”

ANOTHER STEP ALONG THE ROAD TO DISNEY’S SUICIDE: Woke Captain America Says Captain America Doesn’t Represent America. “People want the story in the book to match the cover. We want the cereal that’s on the box. We want the shirt to match the label. So when the dude’s name is CAPTAIN AMERICA, you’d better put some all-caps AMERICA in the damn movie.”

WOMEN NEED THEIR OWN SPACES (CONT’D): Trans-Identified Male Charged After Allegedly Sexually Assaulting Multiple Women While Staying At A Women’s Shelter.

On January 24, the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) issued a press release on the incidents, revealing that Katz had first come to their attention in August of 2024 after two women came forward to report they had been victimized by Katz. Following an investigation, Katz was arrested and charged with two counts of sexual assault.

Despite the serious nature of the charges, Katz was then released with conditions, including to not contact or communicate with any of the complainants; not possess any weapons, firearms or ammunition; and not be within 50 meters of any women’s shelter in Alberta.

Canada needs a “MACA” candidate but reports are that Justin Castreau is loading up the Canadian Senate with sympathizers to thwart a conservative successor.

NEVER FORGET, THEY SAID: The United Nations Forgot That It Established Today as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chinese launch startup secures early funding for fully reusable rocket plane.

Nayuta Space is developing a series of stainless steel rockets named Black Bird, referring to a creature from Chinese mythology rather than the common blackbird. The Xuanniao-1 (Black Bird-1) will use nine Canglong-1 methane-liquid oxygen engines developed by Beijing Aerospace Propulsion Technology Co. Ltd., a commercial rocket engine maker founded in 2018.

The company aims, eventually, to achieve reusability of both stages. The first stage will, unlike the Falcon 9 for instance, not use a reentry burn, instead relying on “aerodynamic recovery,” using the atmosphere and positioning of the stage to do most of the deceleration. This is to save fuel otherwise used for the reentry burn, which on the Falcon 9 uses three Merlin engines for 20-30 seconds, depending on mission and landing specifics.

Nayuta Space also aims for a Starship chopstick-style catch of the first stage, called an “eagle grab,” thus saving mass through not needing landing legs. The company claims to be the first commercial company in China to develop aerodynamic recovery technology. Second stage recovery is a more distant goal.

The entire recovery field still belongs to SpaceX but that will change.

MAYBE IT ISN’T TOO LATE TO MAKE BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN BUT I’M NOT GETTING MY HOPES UP: British Voters Support Trump’s Policies — Sort Of.

THEY REALLY DO WANT YOU DEAD:

"Kill your local MAGA"

Blizzard technical artist and Associate Art Director of Gearbox both wish death to 50% of America in a post and likes to their public Facebook.

This is the type of atmosphere that Activision President Rob Kostich is fostering as he doubles down on woke… pic.twitter.com/OH6KtgsAA6

— Grummz (@Grummz) January 27, 2025

Full text:

Blizzard technical artist and Associate Art Director of Gearbox both wish death to 50% of America in a post and likes to their public Facebook.

This is the type of atmosphere that Activision President Rob Kostich is fostering as he doubles down on woke DEI and ESG today.

HR turns a blind eye to open calls for violence and death at these studios.

They’ve gotten away with these for years as they mistakenly thought they were protected and on the right side of history.

There’s plenty of rot in the public sector but one small way to fight it is to stop buying Activision games.

“ENJOY THE WATER”: Trump’s Gift to California is All Wet.

Droughts in California are a lot like famines in Africa: sure, bad stuff happens but the worst effects are entirely man-made. Crops fail, locusts swarm, and food certainly becomes more expensive. But to get a genuine famine, with scenes of mass starvation like we became depressingly familiar with in Ethiopia 40 years ago — that requires epic economic mismanagement, usually by local warlords who use food as a weapon to maintain political control.

I’ve come to believe that Sacramento Democrats use droughts to maintain political control, too. It’s impossible to scare a population into giving up their money and their freedoms for the sake of Gaia when cities aren’t burning down every now and then, and when there’s enough water for everyone to flush their toilets whenever the need arises. (I visited friends in the Bay Area in ’91 or ’92 when toilet flushing was strictly rationed — ugh.)

Enter, stage right: President Donald Trump.

Much more at the link.

BLUE STATE BLUES:

If you’re an evacuee, just know you can’t sleep on your boat in Marina Del Rey without a permit. And by permit, meaning NO. Applying for a permit is a tactic they use to say NO. Ask to stay on your boat for 7 years as they rebuild…. @VeniceIntel @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/texjJUUmt2

— Howard Leight (@MalibuRockyOaks) January 24, 2025

Kevin Dalton adds: “Living in California means driving by miles-long caravans of illegally parked and occupied RVs to go to your boat that you can’t even temporarily live in if your house burned down because, wait for it, you don’t have the proper permit to sleep on your own boat.”

Those folks probably have enough money and influence to demand change — but will they?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fantasy Politics — Trump Takes Aim at the Federal Income Tax. “From this voter’s perspective, President Trump has hit all of the right notes to begin this term in office. I feel well represented by a politician in this representative republic for the first time in a long time. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times to my “Five O’Clock Somewhere” partner in thought-crime Stephen Green, our new president has begun by dealing with all of the things I wanted dealt with first. I couldn’t imagine it getting any better. Until it did.”

FASTER? PLEASE! Boom Supersonic to break sound barrier during historic test flight today: Watch live. “Boom Supersonic plans to break the sound barrier during a test flight this morning (Jan. 28). This would mark the first time the company achieves the feat, and you can watch the historic action live.”

THE RESISTANCE IS DESPERATE: Catholic Charities Lies to Illegals to Aid Them Against ICE.

CHANGE: Jim Acosta expected to leave CNN after he’s pulled from network’s programming schedule. “Last week, the anchor’s 10 a.m. slot on the network was replaced with ‘The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown’ due to the network’s schedule rearrangement.”

Wolf Blitzer is still around?

Related:

🚨 TRUMP: “They say we had the greatest first week in presidential history. Even CNN is saying ‘this guy is amazing.’ I said ‘did CNN really say that?’ But nobody watches so nobody was able to confirm.” LMAO!!! 😂 pic.twitter.com/0346pFRhrE

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) January 28, 2025

DEATH TO DEI: This Is the Real Reason White Lefties Are Panicking.

COMMIES GONNA COMMIE:

Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.

From their own privacy policy: pic.twitter.com/wueJokHcn3

— Luke de Pulford (@lukedepulford) January 27, 2025

More:

It’s so obvious: flood the AI market with “cheap” AI that everyone rushes to use.

Meanwhile, the CCP collects all the data.

TikTok, Temu, DeepSeek: it's all the same strategy. https://t.co/mV03fu8HHh

— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) January 27, 2025

Anyone still arguing that Chinese engineering is crap is dangerously 10-15 years behind the times.

RUTHLESSLY, IF THE LAST WEEK IS ANYTHING TO GO BY: How Trump’s team will break down the woke bureaucracy.

Trump is off to a great start, but rooting out the Left’s influence campaign will take more than just executive orders. Congress also needs to get involved.

The House and Senate should revisit the question of whether public sector unions should be allowed to represent federal workers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no conservative, opposed the very idea of public sector unions because they pit civil servants against the people’s elected representatives.

FDR’s concerns were born out, as unions like the American Federation for Government Employees loudly opposed efforts to make the bureaucracy more accountable to the people’s elected president.

Public sector unions were once illegal in the federal government—Congress should consider returning to that standard.

The GOP needs to act as though they have 18 months to fix everything because that could be the case.

THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL:

Trump approval currently has NO racial demographic signal. Wild!

White – 55%
Black – 57%
Hisp/oth – 58%

— Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@Mark_R_Mitchell) January 23, 2025

“Reaganesque” might be the word you’re looking for.

SARAH ANDERSON: About Those Tren de Aragua Gang Members in Colorado… “Well, it’s looking more and more like ABC was wrong and the president and vice president were right. (Shocking, I know.)”

Sarah Hoyt’s shocked face was last seen in the jacuzzi with a martini.

I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS: UK navy mistook farting whale for phantom Russians trying to track their nuclear subs.

The UK’s Royal Navy launched a frantic search for phantom Russians off the coast after picking up two mysterious sounds in the ocean — only to conclude that the noises came from a gassy whale, an official told The Sun.

Naval officials feared one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drone subs had dropped a listening device onto the ocean floor between two islands in Scotland and let rip on an investigation.

The two toots were detected about 100 miles from where the UK’s doomsday subs are based.

“We have been analyzing the sounds and now believe it was a marine mammal. A whale,” the official told the British newspaper.

The sound, first described by analysts as a man-made noise, had never before been picked up on the sensors — leading the navy to confuse Das Boof for Das Boot, according to the report.

To be fair, Russian subs are pretty noisy…

JUST IMAGINE HOW QUICKLY THE REPUBLIC OF CALIFORNIA WOULD GO FULL ZIMBABWE ONCE DEMOCRATS REALIZED THEY COULD PRINT AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY WANTED: ‘Calexit’ Could Make Its Way Onto the Ballot in the Golden State in 2028.