Tax the rich

Lose your shirt.

The Shocking Cost of New York’s ‘Tax the Rich’ Experiment Has Finally Been Exposed
New York has spent years aggressively taxing its wealthiest residents in the name of fairness, and the results are now in. Suffice it to say, they’re not pretty.

A new study released Monday by the Citizen Budget Commission (CBC) reveals the state’s share of America’s millionaires has dropped sharply since 2010, triggering a nearly $11 billion shortfall in tax revenue in a single year as high earners quietly packed up and left for lower-tax states.

The analysis shows New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to just 8.7% in 2022 — the steepest decline of any state in the country.

As a direct result, personal income tax collections in 2022 alone were roughly $10.7 billion lower than they otherwise would have been if they had maintained their share of the wealthy folks. The study makes clear that the people leaving pay a disproportionately large share of state taxes, creating a painful hole in the budget that affects everything from public services to infrastructure funding.

This represents tangible evidence that the “tax the rich” mantra does not yield higher revenue to subsequently spend on public services for lower-income families or improve general infrastructure. It is actually taking money away from the state and those residents who might benefit.

Taxing the rich is a platform for the economically illiterate. Unfortunately for the Empire State, the economically illiterate hold significant positions in government.

Not to mention the 80-90% of NY’s population who are also “economically illiterate” their own selves.

Was he or wasn’t he?

Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

The (Pink) Elephant in the Room: Why the Whisper Campaign About Lindsey Graham’s Sex Life Matters
I worked in South Carolina talk radio in the early 2000s. (Shout out to 1250 WTMA, “Your news-talk leader in the Low Country.”) At the time, the sexual escapades of South Carolina politicians were fodder for gleeful gossip — especially our nonagenarian senior senator, Strom Thurmond. More than one Capitol Hill staffer told me his behind-the-scenes nickname was “Spermin’ Thurmond” — and his eye for (much younger) ladies was the stuff of legend.

This was a few years before Lindsey Graham became a senator. Back then, he was still just a congressman, but everyone in South Carolina already knew who he was.

Rep. Graham was an ascending superstar; his political talents were obvious. From pressing the case in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial to his (nonstop) visits to TV studios, Graham was inescapable.

As were the rumors that followed him.

Because I certainly heard them. WTMA’s reporters heard them. Our audience heard them.

It was an open secret: Lindsey Graham was gay, but he stayed in the closet to protect his political career.

Yet despite this rumor’s enduring popularity, it’s entirely possible it wasn’t true at all. Who knows for sure?

But Lindsey Graham stayed scandal-free. He never embarrassed his supporters.

Not even once.

His body is still warm, but some very nasty allegations are already being aired.

Of course, it’s also possible that these allegations are bull[expletive]. It’s easy to lie about someone when they’re not around to defend themselves.

Still, the contrast between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is glaring. For all the talk of the GOP’s “homophobia” and “closed-minded Christian morality,” Sen. Graham was welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms. He was so welcomed that he confidently ran for president in 2016.

He was treated as an individual — instead of as a cardboard cutout for a preassigned special interest group.

Sen. Graham carved his own identity as a military hawk, an unapologetic interventionist, and a global champion of freedom. If you were an ally of America, Graham would defend you until his dying breath.

And now, he’s gone. But he won’t be forgotten.

That’s safe enough to say, I reckon. Gay or no, he was indeed one of a kind; there never was any sort of template or mold to force-fit him into. He went his own way always, which you gotta respect.

Update! Sen Graham’s fill-in replacement has been named.

We now know who will replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who suddenly passed away over the weekend. Gov. Henry McMaster (R-S.C.) appointed Darline Graham Nordone, the late senator’s younger sister, to take his place in the Senate until the election in November.

“Lindsey has always been there for me, and now I will be there for him,” Nordone told reporters at a press conference with McMaster on Monday afternoon. “It is such a privilege to get to finish some of his important work, and I promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States.”

“To Lindsey, I miss you more than I can even put into words,” she added. “But I’m going to do this. I got it.”

Of course, Nordone’s name came up when President Donald Trump suggested that McMaster nominate her in a post on Truth Social: “I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina. This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Pretty unequivocal endorsement, woontchasay?

Iran Prez Mahmoud Ahmajihadi: Israeli spy…?

Ace brings us the deets of an extremely intriguing, if unexpected and wildly improbable, tale.

A rector from the University of Budapest sent an invitation to Ahmadinejad to attend a “climate change” conference. His hope was to get him close to Israeli delegates so that they could talk and maybe eventually broker a peace treaty.

The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to an Israeli safe house in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s 2024 visit to the university and a second one the following year were part of a yearslong Israeli effort to groom him as an intelligence asset who, when the time came, could be installed as Iran’s new leader, according to both American and Iranian officials familiar with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence.

Recruiting Mr. Ahmadinejad was of such priority for Israel that the country’s then-spy chief David Barnea even traveled to the Hungarian capital in 2024 to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad personally, according to former American officials. Soon afterward, they said, Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, notified the C.I.A. that it had been in contact with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Israel’s decision to build a regime-change plan around Mr. Ahmadinejad is an extraordinary twist in the saga of the country’s relations with the former president, who was known for accelerating Iran’s nuclear program, calling regularly for the destruction of Israel and denying the Holocaust.

In recent years, according to American officials, Israel secretly paid money to Mr. Ahmadinejad for housing and travel, and Israeli operatives met him abroad on several occasions, including during his trips to Budapest.

The effort culminated in late February of this year — during the first days of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — with an audacious operation to relocate the former leader, who had been living under strict surveillance in Tehran. The goal: to set in motion the plan to topple the current regime and install Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The plan failed.

On Feb. 28, an Israeli airstrike hit Mr. Ahmadinejad’s compound, targeting the building of his bodyguards and his armored vehicle. After the strike, according to four senior Iranian officials, a black Peugeot car arrived, picked up Mr. Ahmadinejad and whisked him away at high speed from the chaotic scene.

American and Iranian officials with knowledge of the operation said the car had been driven by Mossad operatives, who took Mr. Ahmadinejad to a secret safe house in Iran.

But the former Iranian leader was upset about the frantic rescue operation, and he appeared to be disillusioned about the Israeli plan to return him to power, according to people with knowledge of what occurred.

He eventually left the safe house under circumstances that are still unclear. Mr. Ahmadinejad was not seen in public again until last Monday, when he made a brief appearance at the funeral procession for the slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

His current status remains uncertain. But four senior Iranian officials said that Mr. Ahmadinejad was in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence wing, under house arrest now that Iran has learned about much of his interactions with Israel.

A key part of the plan was that Kurdish Iranians would march on Tehran.

But, as Trump lamented months ago, that never happened. That was supposed to be the ground element which is absolutely essential in actually winning a war.

The story continues from there, and it’s all fascinating stuff.

Jagger to Springstein: shut up and “sing!”

Love him or hate him, he’s right, and you damned well know he is.

Mick Jagger Just Said What Millions of Concertgoers Have Been Thinking
Mick Jagger has spent over 60 years commanding stages, reading crowds, and understanding why people leave home to hear live music.

His conclusion isn’t complicated: Fans came to escape their problems, enjoy the music, and have fund.

They didn’t buy tickets to hear lectures.

Asked about Bruce Springsteen’s habit of attacking President Donald Trump from the stage, Jagger said performers shouldn’t preach to their audience. A Rolling Stones concert should let people forget their mortgages, work pressure, and daily troubles for a few hours.

While I do certainly get the concept of artistic expression’s potential for changing minds, provoking thought, and, ultimately, moving mountains, I also have no patience whatever with entertainers possessed of a certain ideological bent indulging the presumptuous assumption that I’ll ever be willing to sit still for a political lecture from them during a rock and roll show. Sorry, O Great Gazoo, but…NO.

Jagger’s point is sharp because he doesn’t demand political silence from musicians. Songs have carried social and political messages for generations.

He draws the line at turning a paid performance into a speech delivered to people who can’t respond without abandoning seats that may have cost hundreds of dollars.

Springsteen repeatedly crossed that line during his Land of Hope and Dreams tour. He called Trump “reckless, racist, incompetent, and treasonous” and accused his administration of destroying the American idea.

And the beat goes on:

Fans who arrived expecting “Born to Run” also received several minutes of Bruce Springsteen’s keen political analysis.

After all, for the previous many decades, Springsteen has lived among the unwashed, uneducated, and unwitting yocals, listening to us everyday Americans struggle through life.

Pfft!

Of course, he has every right to hold those (überliberal) beliefs and express them. Fans also have every right to wonder why they paid premium prices to hear opinions available free on television, podcasts, and social media.

Some 2026 Springsteen tickets started near $200 for New York shows. Other markets saw resale prices climb far higher, depending on the date and seat. At those prices, promoters might consider adding a warning besides “limited view” and “service fees”; tickets include political commentary whether requested or not.

Of course, it must also be mentioned that any Springstein-licker willing to pony up for said exorbitantly-priced tickets not only well knows beforehand that lectures, Leftard hectoring, and Wokester sermonizing all come along with the price of admission, but also most likely approve wholeheartedly of the opinions they’ll hear their third-rate idol express between BROOOOOOCE! groaning out the tuneless medley of hit “songs.” Such low-IQ refugees from a Pavlov behavioral-science experiment are far more likely to be singing along with every grunt, belch, and incoherent mumble—clenched fists waving and tears streaming down their stubbly cheeks—than to be annoyed and insulted by all the t’ween-songs speechifying.

Personally, I’d rather go to Dearbornistan and sit, shackled and chained to my chair, through a three-hour recording of the Mooselimb call to prayer at high volume than be subjected to “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” yet another gott-damned time. But hey, that’s probably just me, right?

Q: Can the no-referee, no holds barred Death Match inside the traditional padlocked 30-foot cage featuring the Mickster and the aging, addled ex-Boss be very long in coming? Will said match be viewable gratis on a regularly-scheduled WWE broadcast, or will it be a PPV exclusive? Enquiring minds want to know, McMahon.

Famous flyboys of Star Trek

Never knew this about Roddenberry, but the story of Worf’s aviation addiction I’ve red of before.

From the Star Trek Set to Flying Jets
In his high school days, Gene Roddenberry borrowed a copy of Astounding Stories from one of his classmates. This was to become the start of Roddenberry’s fascination with science fiction.

Not many people know that Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, started his career as a military pilot flying 89 combat missions on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. During his military career, he was involved in two aircraft crashes and was awarded the Air Medal and the

Distinguished Flying Cross
It was in the South Pacific where he first started writing, selling stories to flying magazines, and later poetry to publications such as The New York Times. Upon leaving the military Roddenberry joined Pan-Am, flying long-haul on the Clipper Eclipse for four years. One day he was deadheading on a Lockheed L-049 Constellation when his plane experienced an engine failure and subsequent fire.

Crashing in the Syrian Desert with 36 people on board, seven crew members and eight passengers were killed in the crash, and Roddenberry, aged 25 years old at the time, was the ranking surviving flight officer.

Taking command of the situation, he was credited with saving the lives of the remaining passengers and facilitating their rescue. After this event he resigned and began writing for television, and Star Trek was born.

Now to that half-breed Klingon bastige.

Acting in Star Trek Leads to Aviation
Fast forward a few years to the second Star Trek series, ‘The Next Generation’ and we get to the star of our story, Michael Dorn who plays Worf, the first Klingon to serve in Starfleet.

Dorn’s Worf would become a fixture on the show, appearing in 175 episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ between 1987 and 1994, and in 102 episodes of ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ between 1993 and 1999.

He appeared on the big screen in ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’ (1991), ‘Star Trek: Generations’ (1994), ‘Star Trek: First Contact’ (1996), ‘Star Trek: Insurrection’ (1998) and ‘Star Trek: Nemesis’ (2002). As Worf, Dorn appeared onscreen in more Star Trek episodes and movies as the same character than anyone else. He recently reprised the role of Worf in Season 3 of Star Trek Picard.

Dorn had always had a fascination with aviation, leading him to many air shows and a collection of years’ worth of Air Classics Magazines. In 1988, Greg Benson, a friend who worked on the show with him, suggested he take up flying. This coincided with a writers’ strike, giving him a five month break from the show, so Dorn contacted Gunnell Aviation at Santa Monica Airport to work towards his license.

His journey into flying began the same way many do, in a Cessna C172. He still recalls the nerves he felt ahead of his first solo flight. “You pull over to the side, [the instructor] gets out, and he says, ‘OK, take it around’.

“I got to the end of the runway and was getting ready to take off, and I thought to myself, ‘OK, Mr Big Talk, you wanted to learn how to fly. Let’s see what you can do’.

“I was nervous the whole time until I came around and landed. After that first landing, it was just like one of those things where you say, ‘OK, I can do this’. I just kept going around and around. In fact, they had to tell me to stop.”

Then, one day, he got a phone call inviting him to fly with the Blue Angels. They had contacted Woody Harrelson from ‘Cheers’ to go down and do one of their media flights, and he had bailed at the last minute. Somebody had told them Dorn flew and they called him.

Dorn really enjoyed his flight with the Blue Angels, and, realizing it was possible to own an ex-military jet, he started down an adventurous and rewarding new path.

He damned sure did at that, living the dream via owning, among quite a few others, a YT3 Shooting Star, a Cessna Citation 501SP business jet, and the crown jewel of his collection: this gorgeous F86 Sabre.

From where I sit, Dorn looks to be one hellaciously lucky sumbitch.

Candace Owens, Tuqr, misc other conspiracy whackjobs bent over, rogered

Well, THAT’S gotta smart some.

New Courtroom Video Allegedly Shows Charlie Kirk’s Killer Taking the Shot
On Friday, Turning Point USA (TPUSA) contributor Jack Posobiec, in an on-the-spot interview with Turning Point USA’s Taylor Hansen, gave some vivid details of another video shown in the preliminary hearing of Tyler Robinson, who is accused of the murder of TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk.

The new video reportedly shows the Kirk assassin actually moving into position and taking the shot.

Here’s how Mr. Posobiec described the video, which has not been released to the media.

I think everything’s been proven. I think it’s I think it’s I think it’s proven. It’s, I would say, beyond probable cause at this point. I think that the question for me is, how do you even get reasonable doubt when there’s so much evidence?

But the thing that I do just have to say is that I know that you guys watching on live stream couldn’t see the the last video that was shown. Well, it wasn’t edited. It was zoomed in. It was zoomed in from the surveillance video off campus, specifically, the part of the Losee Center, the roof. And… you see everything. You see everything. He climbs over. He assembles the gun, he runs over to the edge, you know, gets down in a prone position, and you see the time.

And we all know what time. And it just, it was like so slow, just watching those seconds. Click, click, click. And then you see him take the shot. And he takes the shot. and then immediately runs. And we’ve seen that video already, but I wasn’t… I knew we were gonna watch that, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t prepared to see this side of what happened because we’ve never seen it before. We saw the other end of the shot, obviously, but this was, this was a whole other level of just evil, and I got very upset watching it, and obviously, the family was very hard for them to watch, and I looked over, and I saw Tyler wasn’t even looking. He wasn’t even looking. See what he did.

And I would just say that I do wish… I wish the public could see that. I hope that video is made public, not because I want it to happen. I didn’t want any of this to happen. I hate all of this. I hate being here. But people need to see what happened. People need to see the other side of this because this is a case. We need to see the truth. We need to see the facts. And this is it’s, it’s the video of the sniper taking the shot. It is exactly what you think it would look like, but it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch, probably since the initial, when this happened, the first video.

Mr. Posobiec gave every indication of being somewhat shaken by the video, which is perfectly understandable.

Hell, it’s not entirely easy to just read Posobiec’s account, honestly—much less watch the danged vid, which I have no great desire to do. Over to you for more obnoxious dementia, Candace.

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Whose fault? Why, TRUMP’S fault, of course!

Who else?

QUELLE SURPRISE! NY Times Blames Platner on — You Guessed It — President Trump
Here’s my biggest problem with the current state of looniness on the left these days. It’s not just that the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media have had sanity in their rearview mirrors for years now; it’s that they’ve become criminally boring while doing so. We’ve all seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; we know that there are crazy people out there who are fun to watch. The 2026 Democrats are just an endless parade of yawn-inducing predictability.

It’s a given that no Democrat will ever take responsibility for anything that he or she has done wrong; personal accountability is anathema to them. Although it has always been a devout hive mind, the Democratic Party did used to be good at properly throwing one of its own under the bus when it served its purposes. Now, thanks to Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome, Dems and the MSM propagandists are obligated to make excuses for any one of theirs who has fallen by the wayside, no matter how aberrant the behavior. More precisely, they are obligated to make an excuse, and that excuse is always the same.

It’s President Donald Trump’s fault.

Virtually everything written in the Times’ Opinion section is a cry for a coupon book to electroshock therapy.

One thing that I do like about the Opinion pieces in the Times is that there is never any tease or slow build-up before the whole thing goes off the rails. The crazy guy spitting up goldfish crackers in the corner while banging his head against the wall doesn’t do nuance. Here’s Yglesias kicking off this one:

Michelle, last fall, you went to Maine and walked away impressed by Platner’s charisma. You’d later write that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature” you’d encountered online. I met Platner last summer, right after he announced his campaign, and also found him incredibly charming and charismatic, even though I didn’t really agree with his populist pitch. Alex, you have spoken to him too. Is it possible that many of us were somehow too informed on this story, and people who hadn’t interacted with the candidate saw things more clearly?

I’m certain that I could have Yglesias talk me through the “too informed” thing for a week and he’d never adequately explain it. That’s only because he’s incapable of being honest with himself. He couldn’t possibly admit that what he did there was position himself as being intellectually superior to his readers while at the same time telling them that he was too stupid to see what was in front of him.

The general vibe here is that Platner is the only Dem candidate in recent years who has any, shall we say, rough edges. As I wrote in the Morning Briefing at the beginning of June, Platner is definitely not an outlier in the Democratic Party. They accepted him simply because he is them. Dems are in their sixth decade of making excuses for Teddy Kennedy; covering for awful people is part of the party’s DNA.

Commie radicals; pedophiles; rapists; noxious bigots; gender-addled sexual deviants; dimestore dictators; violence-prone narcissists: they don’t merely COVER for awful people—for the most part, they ARE awful people. It’s why the spectacular Platner self-immolation has them so fretful and perturbed of late; by plumping so hard for an obvious creep early on, their true colors were on open display for all to see, leaving them nothing to hide behind, no more masks or disguises to don, no plausible excuses and rationalizations to crouch beneath until, with lots of MSM assistance, the whole self-generated shitstorm blows over and is forgotten.

Anybody with even half a lick of sense knew what these dirtbags were all along; now, after this debacle, EVERYBODY does. It’s an extremely ugly picture, and there ain’t no unseeing it.

Update! Larry Correia expresses it a helluva lot better than I can.

Don’t let them distance themselves now. These shit heads knew Platner was scum the whole time and made excuses for him.

Who could have possibly imagined that a dude with a nazi tattoo on his chest would have a history of poor life choices? Not the DNC. This was a shocking revelation. Shocking I say. This is my shocked face.

The democrats are so desperate to get a straight white male figurehead to distance themselves from the stink of failure that is the Kamala era DEI/Box Wine Cat Lady Party, that if you look even sorta like a traditional man they’ll run you for office.

Except the democrats are so fundamentally opposed to traditional, working class masculinity all they can scrape up is closeted weirdos like Walz or Talarico, and psychopath prep schoolers like Platner. Then they try to cosplay as normal, but since they’re democrats, normal is impossible for them.

Annnnnd BINGO. Nailed it, clean and tight.

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No shit, Dick Tracy, where’s the fuckin’ squad car?

Trump FINALLY figures it out. Well, kinda-sorta, I suppose.

President Trump Signals End of “Waste of Time” Ceasefire With Iran
There is a moment in every failed negotiation when one side finally says out loud what everyone else has been thinking. That moment arrived Wednesday in Ankara, when President Donald Trump, seated beside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the alliance’s annual summit, was asked about the status of America’s tentative ceasefire with Iran. His answer required no translation from diplomatic language because he refused to use any.

“For me, I think it’s over,” Trump said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s just a waste of time.”

Trump’s frustration was not with the terms of the deal but with the character of the men across the table. He accused Iranian negotiators of agreeing to terms in private and then denying them in public, a pattern anyone who has followed four decades of Islamic Republic diplomacy will recognize instantly.

“They’re liars. We make a deal. … They go outside, talk to the press. They say, ‘We never even talked about it.’ … As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

He left the door open for his negotiators to keep meeting with their Iranian counterparts, then promptly explained why it would accomplish nothing. “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re liars, they’re cheats. They’re sick people.”

“Left the door open”? Yeah, you might say that…unfortunately.

The United States Is Still Talking to Iran After Big Strikes
Technical talks between the United States and Iran are ongoing despite recent strikes and apparent rising tensions.

A United States official confirmed to Townhall that “the United States is still committed to finding a resolution, and technical talks continue,” adding that “Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”

Yeah, well, until you mouthy jackasses recognize once and for all that A) no “deal” you ever reach with them will be worth the simple chronic halitosis expelled during the “negotiations,” and B) the Mad Mullah regime can NOT be trusted, will NEVER negotiate in good faith, and is SUPREMELY uninterested in what the political leadership of the Great Satan might think about their insane ambitions, then an Iranian nuke isn’t quite the practical impossibility certain Administration personnel would have us believe.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: as long as there remains a political entity in the ME called the Islamic Republic of Iran, then the job isn’t truly done. And until such time as Amerika v2.0’s political leadership has the intestinal fortitude to see that project through to the bitter, painful end, we shouldn’t even be dicking around over there at all.

Love him or hate him, Trump is only human, and as such is every bit as capable of making a mistake as anybody else. It’s my carefully considered opinion that he’s made a YUUUUGE one here, and needs to try, try again until he gets it right. It’s only the whole world that’s at stake, that’s all—no pressure or anything, Mr President, sir.

They oughta get a medal

How the 4th is DONE.


Enter the best SecWar the USA has ever had.


One more time: good on ya, Secretary Hegseth, sir. This SC Congresscritter has the right of it:

Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) responded to the suspensions by demanding that the eight helicopter pilots’ flying privileges be restored immediately.

“The [South Carolina National Guard] needs to drop this review and restore these pilots immediately,” Fry wrote on X. “Millions of Americans applauded the incredible display during Salute to the Shore flyover while expressing complete admiration for them & appreciation for our country and military.

“These pilots should be celebrated, not sanctioned.”

In a separate post, Fry announced that he has written to Guard, formally urging the outfit “to drop this meaningless, bogus investigation and swiftly allow these pilots to return to their flight status as soon as possible.”

Hells muhfuggin’ YEAH!!!

BREAKING NEWS EXCLUSIVE! MUST CREDIT COLDFURY.COM!

Serial rapist, Totenkopf-tattooed sheisskopf, and general Red-in-tooth-and-claw D卐M☭CRAT creep-o (BIRM) Graham Platner disqualified himself from US politics forever when he arrived at his Tuesday press conference in a pollution-belching Ford F-350 Turbodiesel pickup and climbed out of the passenger door carelessly brandishing a lighted tobacco cigarette—known to be more deadly than the bite of a venomous Green Mamba snake.

Fellow D卐M☭CRAT/Commie officials pronounced him persona non grata and excommunicated him from the Party permanentlty after Tuesday’s farcical debacle, saying that he had finally gone too far even for them.

That will be all. Carry on.

Shame, disgrace, dishonor redux

Margolis closes this one out by saying he’s damned glad he no longer works there, and it’s not hard to see why he’d feel that way.

Buffalo, N.Y., has been named an All-America City twice, in 1996 and 2002, an honor the National Civic League hands out for civic engagement and community collaboration. Apparently, that engagement has limits, because the city now wants you to believe it couldn’t scrounge up a single spot in the entire city to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. City officials announced they were scrapping this year’s Fourth of July fireworks show, and the excuse they gave should make every resident furious.

According to Mayor Sean Ryan’s press office, “an appropriate site could not be identified that would provide a safe and widely accessible viewing experience for residents.” That’s the official story. A city of nearly 280,000 people, sitting right on the shore of Lake Erie, supposedly ran out of real estate.

That’s bull crap, plain and simple.

Buffalo just spent years and serious money redeveloping its waterfront into one of the most talked-about public spaces in western New York, and the city has held fireworks shows there before. Over the years, Buffalo has sponsored Independence Day fireworks at Niagara Square, Delaware Park, LaSalle Park, and Riverside Park: four different sites, decades of practice, zero problems. Then, in 2026, on the country’s 250th anniversary, suddenly nobody could find a spot.

Sure.

Mayor Ryan claims plans to hold the fireworks were on track until some 11th-hour complication scuttled them. He never said what that complication actually was.

Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) put it better than I could. “Buffalo’s leaders claimed they ‘couldn’t find a site’ to celebrate America’s 250th birthday with fireworks. Yet they somehow had no trouble finding the time and space to raise a Somali flag. That wasn’t a logistical challenge. It was a choice.”

He added, “At a moment when our nation should be celebrating 250 years of freedom, those in charge sent a clear message about what they value, and it wasn’t America. The people of Buffalo deserve leaders who are proud to celebrate this country, not ones who treat patriotism as an afterthought. Elections have consequences, and so do the priorities of those we elect.”

Adding insult to injury, one day after announcing the fireworks were dead, the city let the nonprofit Heal International raise the Somali flag over City Hall at Niagara Square for the fourth year running, with local elected officials promoting the event.

Happily, certain atypically patriotic denizens of the New Sharia state of Buffalostan saw to it that this overly obnoxious, totally gratuitous insult didn’t end well for Caliphate authorities, and good on ’em for it:

The backlash against the city of Buffalo was swift. Overnight, vandals sliced the cable, pried open the flagpole’s access panel, and made off with the Somali flag entirely. Not many on social media are crying about it.

A consolation fireworks show is now planned for Aug. 2 at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, marking the day the last founding father actually signed the Declaration of Independence. Nice gesture. Six weeks too late, and beside the point.

Buffalo’s leaders had a choice between honoring their own country’s 250th birthday and honoring someone else’s, and they made it in under a week.

Sad as it is, infuriating as it is, that’s about the size of it, yeah.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent Commie whore?

The Enemy within.

When Will Obama Say, ‘What’s Happened to My Party?’
In 2013, Obama said, “… nobody questions the efficacy of market economies in terms of producing wealth and innovation and keeping us competitive.”

Today, some of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, with the biggest voices, do exactly that.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani vows to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” One of his endorsed candidates for the U.S. House, Darializa Avila Chevalier, expressed views that would have been unrecognizable in the Democratic Party of President Obama.

Avila Chevalier once retweeted: “I just cannot get over the fact that the universe has foisted upon us the perfect illustration of literally every failing of capitalism and people are still like we can’t be communists cuz there won’t be enough types of soup.” CNN examined her now-deleted X account and reported it contained “repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.” Another post encouraged workers to “seize the means of production.” Another advocated worker control of wealth. She wrote: “You can call that communism, you can call it socialism, you can call it pancakes.” She described Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” as an “essential must-read.”

Her posts went well beyond economics. In April 2020, she called Joe Biden a “rapist.” After then-Vice President Kamala Harris urged migrants not to cross the southern border illegally, Avila Chevalier responded: “I have no nuance to add. (Expletive) Kamala Harris.”

Avila Chevalier called for abolishing police and prisons, posted about wiping her hands on the American flag, and denounced interracial relationships by accusing Black and Arab men of “fetishizing ugly colonizer women,” one of several posts in which she attacked white women.

Claire Valdez, another Mamdani-endorsed Democratic nominee for the U.S. House, has vowed to “take away buildings” from alleged slumlords and supports nationwide rent control.

Where is Barack Obama?

Same place he’s always been: lurking backstage, disguised behind the mask of reasonable, moderate, common-sense Leftism. It’s a mark of how abysmally far we’ve come, in precisely the wrong direction, that his ideological heirs now disdain to even bother with the familiar old D卐M☭CRAT duplicity, disguises, and deceits.

Kill her. Kill them ALL.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

May 1775 – …known as the Charlotte Mecklenburg Declaration:

1. Resolved, That whoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this country – to America – and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

2. Resolved, That we the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association, with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties — and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.

3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self–governing Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

4. Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this country, we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our former laws, wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.

5. Resolved, That it is also further decreed, that all, each and every military officer in this county, is hereby reinstated to his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. And that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz. a Justice of the Peace, in the character of a ‘Committee-man,’ to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, and union, and harmony, in said county, — and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America until a more general and organized government be established in this province.

We Americans Should Thank the Scots…

Shame, disgrace, dishonor

The view from the America-hating Left.

My local paper is honoring the semiquincentennial by running a different story every day which highlight reasons for their shame about being American. In the past week, the featured stories have included slavery, lynchings, the slave trade, the KKK, and segregation. There is no triumph in those stories about what was overcome under the stars and stripes either, just pure venom at what a sinister country this is.

But it’s long been this way. For decades it’s made me sad that the left couldn’t stop hating on America for even one day of the year, but they can’t. I recall listening to the NPR station back in the late ‘90s, and it’s Independence Day coverage was heavily focused on injustices and land theft committed against Native Americans and Mexicans. I fully understood that NPR was providing emotional support to its listeners on a very difficult day. Those of us patriotically celebrating the USA have always caused emotional distress to the left.

Because Democrats are desperately fixated on this country being built on stolen land, they’ll never accept the U.S. as being a legitimate country to take pride in. At this point, all we on the right can do is laugh at them and hope their fervent anti-patriotism propels their party into further disrepute.

Exactly, a hunnert-n-twelve percent correct. Thus:

Next up, a little history.

At the recent Texas Democratic Convention, it opened with, what else, a land acknowledgement to the native Karankawa Indians. This is what attendees heard: “I would also like to acknowledge that we gather on the traditional homelands of the indigenous peoples of the coastal bend and the area known as Corpus Christi. The Karankawa were the people of Corpus Christi Bay.”

Now listen, I’m a guy who believes it’s imperative to celebrate the good and de-emphasize the bad in those who came before us and helped shape this country, but the Karankawa were so rough that even the “civilized tribes” kept their distance.

The Tonkawas of Central Texas allied with and fought alongside white settlers because the Tonkawas were sandwiched between the Karankawas to the southeast and the Comanches to the northwest. History is complicated, but land acknowledgements aren’t. They are simple, no-cost outlets for white guilt.

They are that, certainly—and very little else, same as all the other forms of cheap virtue-signaling set forth in the Holy Church of Liberalism’s catechism. New category, one it appears all too likely I’ll be getting lots of use out of going forward: Stolen land.

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