April 23, 2026

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Peace Through Strength — and the Cost of Forgetting It. “Most Thursdays, I take readers on a deep dive into a topic I hope you’ll find interesting, important, or at least amusing. This week, we’ll examine Trump’s massive military spending proposal, and whether it’s really all that.”

Posted at 8:06 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE:

Posted at 7:50 am by Stephen Green

MAYBE THEY CAN CATCH UP TO THE POLES BY THEN, IF THEY WORK REALLY HARD AT IT: Germany unveils strategy for becoming Europe’s strongest military by 2039.

Titled “Verantwortung für Europa” − Responsibility for Europe − the military strategy identifies Russia as the primary threat and sets out scenarios for potential attacks on NATO territory. Pistorius declined to detail the classified threat assessments, quipping that releasing them would be tantamount to “adding Vladimir Putin to our email distribution list.” The strategy also marks a doctrinal shift toward a “one theater approach,” treating NATO territory, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as interconnected security spaces rather than discrete theaters.

The accompanying capability profile moves away from rigid hardware quotas − the number of tanks, aircraft or ships − toward a flexible, effects-based planning model. The question is not how many battalions the German army needs, but what effects it must be able to produce, said the defense minister. He cited deep precision strike, air defense against hypersonic missiles, and drone capabilities as priority areas, stressing that Germany was essentially starting from scratch on long-range strike.

The personnel growth plan foresees expanding from 185,420 active-duty soldiers today to 260,000 by the mid-2030s, alongside a parallel reserve buildup from around 60,000 currently assigned reservists to at least 200,000, for a combined total of 460,000 combat-ready troops.

The 13-year timeframe ought to make you wonder how serious they really are.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green

NEW CIVILITY WATCH:

Paul Krugman could not be reached for comment.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT SPENCER: Hey SPLC, Where’s My Check? “There is another striking aspect of the recent revelations about the SPLC secretly funding ‘right-wing extremist’ groups and providing a bogus foundation for the Biden regime’s ridiculous claim that ‘white supremacists’ constituted the biggest terror threat the nation faced. And that is that neither I nor others that the SPLC included on its spurious and defamatory “hate list” for years ever received a penny. The payouts were apparently reserved for the real hate groups, not for the patriotic groups the SPLC was trying to destroy by including them on its list.”

The whole SPLC enterprise was about propping up dwindling hate groups like the KKK, and them using them to smear the entire right.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Plus:

Tweet concludes: “In other words, it’s accused of funding white supremacist groups, and then pointing to these white supremacist groups to get people to give it money. That’s not ‘paying informants.’ That’s a massive fraud.”

And:

Posted at 7:04 am by Stephen Green

BECAUSE THIS IS THE YEAR OF FINISHING EVERYTHING THAT HAS SAT ALMOST FINISHED FOR YEARS:

RELEASE DAY FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2).

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

WHAT HE SAID:  Unmasking.

Posted at 6:05 am by Sarah Hoyt