OPEN THREAD: Hope your weekend is doing well.

ANTI-SEMITISM AT THE WASHINGTON POST: The editors of the Washington Free Beacon appear to be right on target.

UPDATE: I somehow missed that Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll much earlier in the day had a superb deep-dive into this disgrace.

ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON’T: Gimme (Government) Shelter. States and cities spend billions on housing projects that are costly, cumbersome to build, and won’t solve the affordability crisis. Steven Malanga digs into the scandalous programs, which have provided housing to people who don’t need it (one recipient was earning $1 million annually) at prices that are gouging taxpayers, like “affordable” units that cost as much $1 million apiece to build.

NOW IN PAPERBACK: Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order. What’s wrong with the World Economic Forum’s plans for humanity? What can be done to resist the Davos elite’s determination to run our lives? Michael Walsh has assembled essays from, among others, Angelo Codevilla, Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Douglass Murray, Harry Stein, and me.

WINNING TACTICS: How to Defeat Left-Wing Racialism. Battle plans from six domestic-policy experts: Wade Miller, Dan Morenoff, Ilya Shapiro, David E. Bernstein, James Sherk, Judge Glock, and Christopher F. Rufo.

END OF AN ERA: Dodge, Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis Is Following the Hemi Out the Door. “Nobody should envy the person at Dodge that has to convince a sales base of high-horsepower V-8 muscle car owners to eventually switch to electric power, but that person won’t be Tim Kuniskis, who is retiring from his roles at Dodge and Ram on June 1 this year.”

Yeah, good luck with that.

DISTURBING VIDEO APPEARS TO SHOW SEAN “DIDDY” COMBS ASSAULTING SINGER CASSIE VENTURA:

Security video aired by CNN appears to show Sean “Diddy” Combs attacking singer Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016, the latest in a months-long series of public allegations and revelations of physical and sexual violence from the hip-hop mogul.

The video aired Friday appears to show Combs, wearing only a white towel, punching and kicking the R&B singer who was his protege and longtime girlfriend at the time. The footage also shows Combs shoving and dragging Cassie, and throwing a vase in her direction.

The security camera video, dated March 5, 2016, closely resembles the description of an incident at an InterContinental Hotel in the Century City area of Los Angeles described in a November lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Cassandra Ventura, that alleged years of sexual abuse and other violence from Combs.

Meanwhile from 2020, great moments in projection: Sean “Diddy Combs” endorsed Joe Biden, declared Trump “Dangerous.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs flipped a switch when it came to his friendship with Donald Trump. When Trump became president, things changed drastically, and many of his former friendships faltered — his friendship with Combs being one of them. In a 2020 interview with Charlamagne tha God, the rapper expressed worries about what would happen if Trump were to get reelected as president in the 2020 election. “If this man [Trump] is elected, we’re not standing by no more getting killed, we not scared of anybody standing up and standing by, we’re on the verge of a race war,” Diddy said. This came in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement surging in response to police violence and the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Combs continued criticizing his former friend and Trump’s controversial opinions in the interview as he said, “White men like Trump need to be banished. That way of thinking is real dangerous.” With the 2020 election nearing, the rapper found it essential to endorse Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden. “When we look at it we don’t have no choice,” he said. “Say what you want about Biden, I can’t say I love to pick either but, hey, we gotta get him [Biden] in office, and then we gotta hold him accountable.” Combs’ interview drew a line in the sand as he made it clear his friendship with Trump was over.

Finally, at America’s Newspaper of Record: Nation Starting To Wonder If Diddy May Have Done A Few Of Those Things He Repeatedly Rapped About Doing.

(H/T: Clay Travis.)

PASS: Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas?

Hertz’s latest challenge is trying to get out of its entanglement with Tesla. In retrospect, it just looks like a bad idea. Companies like Hertz make money when they rent out cars as often as possible, which means their vehicles will often have more miles than the average vehicle, and, in turn, have more problems that need expensive maintenance. A side deal renting the EVs to Uber drivers — who often have to drive hundreds of miles a day to make a profit — wore down the cars even more, which also weighed down their resale value. Last month, the company announced that it had sold about 10,000 EVs — about a third of the total fleet it intends to offload. At first blush, that looked like Hertz would be ahead of schedule. But the pace of sales is starting to slow. One salesman at a Hertz in Smithtown, New York, told me that sales have dropped from as much as 30 a week in January and February to about five a week in April. Online forums are full of people steering prospective buyers away from Hertz vehicles. One factor may be price. “Hertz does not provide haggling on price,” he said. “It is what it is.”

When Hertz first announced it was selling off most of its EVs, it blamed lower demand among the traveling public than it had expected. “They have an oversupply” of Teslas, said John Plimpton Babcock, an analyst at Bank of America who covers the car-rental company. That lower turnover meant less profit, he added.

It makes sense Hertz would try to sell off its fleet now. Purchases of brand-new EVs are stalling out after a decade or so of stratospheric growth. Auto loans have interest rates starting at about 5 percent and go skyward from there. A shortage of reliable charging stations, and worries about batteries losing power in cold weather, have all hurt public interest in owning — and perhaps even renting — an EV.

If you’re going to rent from Hertz, why not rent something with serious pornographic value? Rent a Shelby Mustang.

ESSENTIAL CONCEALED CARRY ACCESSORIES.

GOT WOKE, WENT…: Sports Illustrated fails to deliver May issue after breakup with publisher: sources.

Sports Illustrated’s tumultuous breakup with its publisher caused the magazine to skip production of the May edition – leaving more than 1 million subscribers with empty mailboxes last month, The Post has learned.

Arena Group – which had its license revoked in January after failing to make a $3.75 million quarterly payment to rights-holder Authentic Brands – refuses to turn over the subscriber list to new publisher Minute Media, three sources close to the situation told The Post.

By the letter of its contract, Arena – controlled by 5-Hour Energy founder Manoj Bhargava – does not believe it needs to share the SI subscriber list, sources said.

Authentic sued Arena for $48 million for backing out on the remaining three years of the deal, and Bhargava might use the subscriber list as part of negotiating leverage in potential settlement talks, one of the sources speculated.

Arena Group and Authentic Brands declined to comment.

Minute Media did not return calls.

The disruption – believed to be the first skipped issue in the magazine’ 70-year history – was further fueled by Arena firing about 100 SI employees as part of its negotiating tactics with Authentic.

Bhargava had even threatened to kill the print edition of the iconic magazine after learning Authentic owner Jamie Salter was leaning toward awarding the rights to Minute Media, as The Post previously reported.

The last monthly issue printed was the April 2024 baseball preview edition with Shohei Ohtani on the cover – which was mailed to SI’s roughly 1 million paid and non-paid subscribers before the handover. Arena continued publishing SI after its license was terminated while attempting to regain the rights.

In accordance with the prophecy:

JOHN LUCAS: What Incentives Does Israel Have to Agree to a Cease Fire?

The following is a guest post (originally on LinkedIn), by an Army officer with extensive combat experience in the Mideast and the Levant.

* * * * *

What incentives does Israel have to cease counter-Hamas operations?

Nations, like individuals, historically (not always) operate off a series of incentives.

Net positive = do it

Net negative = avoid it

An easy concept to understand but not simple in practice.

There is no shortage in calls for Israel to implement a ceasefire with Hamas, despite the fact that the current conflict is a direct result of the October 7 Hamas attack where over 1100 Israelis were killed, many of them civilians.

To date Israel has resisted these calls, including those from the U.S., for an operational stand down.

But why?

As a student and practitioner of war I find myself asking, what incentives does Israel have to bow to international pressure?

This is NOT a political commentary, merely a thought experiment on incentives vs. disincentives.

Below are three reasons why Israel has no incentive to stop short of total victory:

Read the whole thing.

Related: Only Israel Wants To End the ‘Forever War.’ “Which brings us to the second point: This is already a forever war. And that forever war was declared by Israel’s enemies and is re-declared each time Israel offers to end it. Hamas’s raison d’etre, in fact, is forever war. You can find this out by doing such things as: asking them; reading their statements; reading their essential documents; watching their interviews; opening your eyes; etc.”

LES RUSSES ARRIVENT! LES RUSSES ARRIVENT! France Invites Russia to D-Day Anniversary Events and Allies Are Naturally Upset.

France has decided that Western allies shouldn’t let a little old thing like a war in Europe prevent the 80th-anniversary party for the D-Day landings from including the Russians.

Russians were not involved in the D-Day landings. In fact, Russia helped start World War II when its alliance with Nazi Germany gave Hitler a free hand in Western Europe to attack Poland.

All water under the bridge, right? We were “allies” then even when Russian troops raped their way across Germany on the road to Berlin and afterward.

So leaving Russia out of the 80th anniversary commemoration of D-Day would have been bad form. And for French diplomacy, “form” always trumps the real world.

Officials from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and two other NATO allies expressed their chagrin at the invite.

Protocol issues, the symbolism of inviting Russians, and questions about what sort of “diplomatic engagement” would be required were the kinds of queries being asked by the Allies.

“We would defer to the government of France, which organizes the commemoration at Normandy,” a White House official said. “But perhaps this will remind the Russians that they