NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Cam Newton blows the lid off the NFL, claims players, coaches, and execs faked their COVID-19 vaccination. “Aaron Rogers wasn’t the only one,” Newton said about players being against the vaccine. “He wasn’t the only one in the Packers organization. He wasn’t the only one in the Packers quarterback room.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
August 13, 2026
IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Fat Amy Gets No Respect.
It’s the strike fighter that launched a thousand flamewars, yet somehow keeps succeeding at one mission after another. And might be about to take on yet one more.
“But it costs too much,” they said. “It flies too slow,” which is true. “The helmet is too heavy,” which is weird and also true. “It can’t dogfight.” And my favorite, because it’s the truest: “They never should have tried to make one jet fit three branches.”
Perhaps most embarrassing of all, the pilots who fly the F-35 — officially designated the Lightning II, which I always thought was a lazy name — call it “Fat Amy.”
Yet just in the last week, Lockheed Martin announced another new role for the much-derided fighter: ballistic missile defense. I mean, can something called Fat Amy do that?
And a whole lot more at the link.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Woke 2.0: Hollywood’s Next Act?
The box office struggled over the past five years, with many wondering if the theatrical model would go the way of the pager and 8-track tape. YouTube creators seized on woke Hollywood’s descent, mocking both the stars who read from the woke gospel to film and TV flops that suffocated on progressive groupthink.
“Lightyear”
“The Marvels”
“The Acolyte”
“Starfleet Academy”This year, movie goers fell back in love with cinema thanks to “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “Michael,” “Project Hail Mary” and “Toy Story 5,” among other smashes.
Comedy roasts came roaring back, too, and attempts to shame comedians for telling the “wrong” jokes no longer lead to hostage-style apologies.
Yet Ocasio-Cortez’s “Woke 1.0” quip suggested the worst is yet to come. It’s hard to see otherwise, politically speaking. Consider the rise of the radical DSA movement within the Democratic Party.
Woke 1.0 might look quaint by comparison. Will Hollywood follow suit?
Yes… and no.
Read the whole thing.
P.R. GUY SCOTT PINSKER: How Republicans Plan to Defeat Abdul El-Sayed — and Why We May Regret It.
August 12, 2026
THAT’S JUST A WARMUP FOR STARSHIP’S PLANNED CADENCE: SpaceX plans rare stretch of 3 launches in 7 days from California.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Google cofounder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses.
According to a filing from Friday, Brin donated an additional $20 million to Building a Better California, a PAC and political advocacy organization opposing the state’s billionaire tax and supporting other pro-business policies and housing and infrastructure affordability. He has now given a total of $102 million to the group.
Proposition 40, which will be on the ballot in November, would impose a one-time, 5% tax on California’s 200 billionaires, with 90% of the revenue from the proposed measure going toward the state’s health care program and 10% going toward education, food assistance, and administration. Brin, with a net worth of nearly $270 billion, could owe more than $13 billion as a result of the tax.
Previously: Gavin Newsom urges a national ‘billionaires’ tax’ while fighting one in California.
Democrats want a national billionaire tax (that will mysteriously end up applying to far lesser beings) on the national level in the hopes that there will be nowhere to hide from it.
GO AWAY: New surveillance tech links your phone to your license plate.
Imagine that you share a ride to work with the same colleague most mornings. As it passes by a license plate reader, the camera records the car, which can be linked through vehicle records to its registered owner. Beside it, another sensor detects signals broadcast by devices traveling nearby, such as your phone and your colleague’s smartwatch.
After enough trips, software may treat some of those devices as a recurring electronic signature associated with the vehicle. Weeks later, one of the same device signals appears alongside a different car connected to an investigation. The signal itself may not contain its owner’s name, but its previous association with a known vehicle gives investigators another clue they can use to work out who was carrying the device.
SignalTrace, a system marketed by the security company Leonardo, is designed to work alongside automatic license plate readers. The company says it can recognize groups of consumer devices that regularly move together, then associate them with license plate records and time-stamped locations. The pattern can then be searched even when a police investigator does not know the plate number.
Wanted: A car-sized Faraday cage.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Tax refunds gone for ‘foreseeable future’ under Prop NN.
A measure referred to Colorado’s November ballot by the legislature would allow the state to keep and spend over $850 million in just the first two budget cycles after passage, revenue that otherwise would be refunded back to taxpayers.
Majority Democrats passed Senate Bill 26-135 during the last legislative session, which placed Proposition NN on the ballot. The measure would allow the state to retain excess tax dollars collected over the current Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) revenue cap to spend on public education and cover homestead property tax exemption reimbursements.
According to a new report by the Common Sense Institute, Prop NN would increase state spending by $329.9 million in fiscal year (FY) 2027 and $521 million in FY 2028, totaling $850.9 million over the two years.
Those are funds that would otherwise be sent back to taxpayers under TABOR, the constitutional amendment that limits growth of a portion of the state budget to a formula of population growth plus inflation. TABOR also requires voter approval for tax increases, among other things.
If NN passes, Dems will pass along our tax refunds to their cronies in public education.
It’s For the Children™, of course, but as always, little or none of the additional monies will reach any classrooms.
DISPATCHES FROM THE OCCUPIED ZONES: Mamdani and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (and It’s Only Wednesday).
It started so innocently, as these things do, with New York City’s young socialist mayor demanding nonsensical NYPD coverage for his activist wife’s ego-trip to Syria and Lebanon later this month. By the time the week was over, Zohran Mamdani’s rent control scheme was a shambles, his signature pied-à-terre tax was on judicial hold, and Florida was mocking him as its “Economic Developer of the Year” on a Times Square digital billboard.
Oh, wait — it’s only Wednesday.
Much more at the link.
MAYBE A FEW YEARS HARD LABOR: No Repentance = No Grace For Woke Bullshit. “There was no ‘Woke 1.0,’ just a continuous racialist, anti-Western Civilization, anti-rational, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-Republican movement whose roots stretch back into the Comintern, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, carried forward into the Port Huron Statement, the Weather Underground, the campus radicals of the 1960s and their long march through academia and other western institutions, special campus victimhood identity politics carve-out departments for blacks, Hispanics, radical feminists and ‘Queer Theory,’ into the political correctness of the 1980s that blossomed into the poisonous flowers of social justice, radical transsexism, Palestinian- and Islamo-felia and anti-Israel animus that has turned into full-blown antisemitism, and a radical fringe in the Democrat Party that metastasized to its core under Obama and President Autopen. AOC’s Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow-travelers were all on-board with their lunacy every step of the way.”
YES:
This is true.
Leftists want you dead and your society destroyed.
Democrats are leftists.
Vote. https://t.co/DzVtVPyrdD
— Nick Searcy, Actor/Director/Producer/Author (@yesnicksearcy) August 12, 2026
“There’s always a choice!” the wise man once said. “This one is a choice between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ — which is a difference much more poignant than that between ‘good’ and ‘better.'”
BLAMING THE JEWS FOR THE THING THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC SAYS IT’S TRYING TO DO IS QUITE THE FLEX:
Cenk Uygur: “Everybody knows it’s just Israel falsifying documents to make it look like Iran is trying to kill Trump.”
Amir Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Forces: “We aim to kill Trump.” pic.twitter.com/ptmpslvSKu
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 12, 2026
Uygur’s audience eats it up, regardless.
NIFTY: U.S. Army Plans To Adapt Its 50mm Chain Gun For Counter UAS.
The service on Aug. 10 released a solicitation to integrate the gun into a system that can track and shoot down Group 1-3 uncrewed aircraft systems. The solicitation, from the Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems, is to support a potential development program and demonstration efforts, although no requirements have been set yet. Responses are due by Aug. 24.
The Army selected the Picatinny Arsenal-designed XM913 chain gun for its Next Generation Combat Vehicle.
Along with the solicitation and to coincide with the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium here, companies are showcasing their proposals to use new ammunition for counter UAS. Northrop Grumman, for example, released a breakdown of its plans to use the Bushmaster family of chain guns and proximity ammunition for the role.
They’ll end up needing 10 times more ammo than they’ll plan for.
YES:
This is how all DSA people speak in private. Every single one. Communists want to destroy your entire way of life, and they will lie to you and pretend like they're not violent psychopaths. Don't let socialists anywhere near power. pic.twitter.com/cL39czf7oN
— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) August 12, 2026
NO NOMINEE JUST YET: Rep. Ralph Norman and Sen. Darline Graham in S.C. Republican Senate Primary Runoff.
ASIDE FROM HARDCORE STATISTS, IS THERE ANY TRADITIONAL DEMOCRAT CONSTITUENCY HE DOESN’T HATE?
Hasan Piker:
“I don't give a f*** what Black people care about.”
“Let's go back to a better time, when lynchings were happening.” pic.twitter.com/EiEsKuuyrd
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 11, 2026
Make him the face of today’s Democrat party — because he is.
DISPATCHES FROM THE OCCUPIED ZONES: Manhattan rents reach all-time high of $6,655/month amid Mamdani’s rent freeze and pied-a-terre tax threat. “That’s a brutal 10% jump from a year ago, and real estate pros are pointing straight at Mayor Mamdani’s incoming rent freeze on stabilized units as one of the culprits, along with a looming pied-a-terre tax that brokers say is only going to squeeze the market harder. The pain is compounded by a record-low number of vacant apartments across the city, leaving desperate renters with almost nowhere to turn.”
As foretold by the prophets:
Who could have predicted that stupid ideas cooked up by rich squatting nepo babies would backfire and hurt struggling working class New Yorkers https://t.co/yW1kyiHYaJ
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 12, 2026
SPOILER: THEY GET QUITE A LOT FOR THEIR MONEY.
Does anyone believe they don't think they are getting something for their money? Direct interference and propaganda investment are one thing, but this is the longer influence game. https://t.co/2ZGdeaHVYf
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) August 11, 2026
JUST ADDED TO THE EVER-EXPANDING KINDLE LIST:
People who are interested in this phenomenon should read Philip Roth's American Pastoral https://t.co/D9fqMiN0v1
— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 12, 2026
Original post reads in full: “Many of the loser children of my wealthy friends who see no way to emulate the success of their parents, have gravitated toward Mamdani-ism and found community and a sense of purpose by rejecting capitalism as a way to cope with their own failure. Please note they have nor however rejected their trust funds or living subsidies while pursuing their ‘passions’ in NGOs, dabbling in the arts or trying to invest their parents money in ‘VC.’
“ANSWERED” IS A FAR CRY FROM “HANDLED”: New Orleans Using AI to to Make Sure 911 Calls are Answered is a Good Thing… Isn’t It? “They system, of course, isn’t perfect. It had difficulty during training with accents, intonation and inflection. The New Orleans folks say they’ve worked on that and ironed out the bugs. But with AI, other possibilities can come into play that might delay a response.”
I’ve found AI helpful in all kinds of ways, but for customer service or tech calls, it’s usually an aggravating time-waster at best.
THEY DON’T HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE, THEY JUST HAVE TO FALL IN LINE:
So establishment Democrats blocked the crazy socialist in Wisconsin.
Wonder how that will go over with the younger college voters.
— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) August 12, 2026
I read about it … magical votes showed up at the last minute to help Crowley.
Funny how that happens when the Democrat establishment wants it to.
— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) August 12, 2026
Maybe not ha-ha funny.