It's My Mind

The Default We’re Forgetting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Jeremy Boreing’s latest monologue, Hasan Piker and Candace Owens Are Selling You Third-World Thinking, is one of the clearest things he’s done. He starts with two trials running at the same time in America and uses the distance between them to measure how far we’ve drifted from what made the West different in the first place.

One trial is in a courtroom in Provo, Utah. Prosecutors spent months building a case the hard way: eyewitnesses, security footage, forensics, DNA, handwriting, the actual rifle. Rules bind everyone. The accused is presumed innocent. Evidence has to survive cross-examination. It is slow, adversarial, and impersonal. That process is not natural. It is the product of centuries of deliberate cultural work.

The other “trial” happens behind a podcast mic. There is no judge, no burden of proof, no fixed standard of evidence. Verdicts arrive by likes and shares. Narratives shift week to week. Gossip and social proof do the work that evidence used to do. Boreing points at Candace Owens’ treatment of the Charlie Kirk case as the clearest current example on the right, and at Hasan Piker’s cheerful defense of theft as “collection on a debt” as the left’s version. Different aesthetics. Same underlying operating system.

You can watch Boreing's monologue here: [VIDEO]

What Boreing Means by Third-World Thinking

Cross-cultural researchers distinguish guilt-innocence cultures from honor-shame cultures. The West, at its best, runs on the first: an objective moral code that applies to everyone, justice that is supposed to be blind, and the claim that outranks the man making it. Most of the world runs on the second. Worth is issued by the watching group and can be revoked by it. An unanswered insult is a kind of social death. The sneer is not a failure of argument; in that framework, the sneer is the argument. Tribal loyalty and blood frequently rank above abstract justice.

Boreing’s sharpest point is that third-world thinking is not primarily a foreign import. It is the human default—the water most of our species has always swam in. Western civilization is the weird exception. It had to be built. The medieval Church’s ban on cousin marriage helped dissolve the clan and create the individual as a meaningful unit. Impersonal exchange—fixed prices, enforceable contracts, honest weights—replaced the natural human preference for haggling, favoritism, and clan advantage. John Adams defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre because he thought the truth was owed even to the enemy of his own people. That choice cost him half his law practice. It was not normal. It was a decision to prioritize something higher than tribe.

Kick out the scaffolding of Christian virtue, rule of law, and impersonal institutions, and the older pattern returns. Social media accelerates it by rewarding dominance displays over careful argument. Mass low-skill immigration from honor-shame societies imports the pattern demographically. Parts of the political class on both sides increasingly treat it as sophistication rather than regression.

Shapiro’s Earlier Diagnosis

This is the same phenomenon Ben Shapiro diagnosed earlier this summer in his episode on the race to the fringes. Shapiro defined Third Worldism as wokeness applied to the entire globe. Domestic wokeness treated every unequal outcome inside America as proof the system was rigged. Third Worldism makes the identical claim internationally: every failure in the Global South is the direct result of Western exploitation. Western success is not the product of better institutions, culture, governance, or choices. It is permanent moral debt for colonialism and “empire.”

Once that frame is accepted, the politics follow. Borders become tools of oppression. Support for Israel becomes settler-colonialism. Criticism of Havana, Beijing, or Tehran is dismissed as Western propaganda. The solution is never better governance in failing countries. It is the transfer of power, moral authority, and demographic weight from the West to those who claim to speak for the “exploited.” You hear it in DSA-aligned candidates arguing America needs more officeholders from the Global South so the country can finally “reckon” with its history. You see it in influencers who defend Mao while treating anti-Western “resistance” movements as inherently righteous regardless of body counts.

Shapiro’s larger observation was that this ideology is no longer confined to campus seminars. Parts of the Democratic Party’s rising class have absorbed it. The older language of equal opportunity is being displaced by civilizational indictment. And he warned that the right has its own version of the race to the fringes—soft defenses of predatory figures, aesthetic toughness that excuses real predation, the elevation of tribe and dominance over the unglamorous work of defending institutions that actually produce prosperity and liberty.

The Connection

Boreing and Shapiro are describing the same thing from different altitudes.

Shapiro focuses on the ideological superstructure: a theory of moral agency that denies people and nations outside the West are full authors of their own outcomes. Everything bad is downstream of someone else’s power. That frame pairs easily with revolutionary talk because if the problem is external and permanent, internal reform is pointless. Only rupture will do. The contemporary Western version is largely a product of Western self-loathing. It offers activists a way to feel radical without having to build functioning institutions, and it gives political entrepreneurs a grievance that never has to be resolved.

Boreing digs into the cultural substrate underneath. Third Worldism works because it resonates with the human default. The left sells the transaction-as-theft version (“take yours back”). Parts of the post-liberal right sell the tribe-as-the-point version (“reward friends and punish enemies”). Both roads lead to the same place: the pre-Western pattern in which status is settled by display of dominance rather than by evidence, and in which the individual is secondary to the group’s honor.

The physical walls at the border are not the only ones crumbling. The walls in the mind—the ones that kept the default at bay—are cracking too. Social media, elite self-hatred, and demographic change are all accelerating the reversion. The West did not invent tribal loyalty, blood over justice, or social proof over truth. Our own ancestors lived by those rules. The achievement was learning to overcome them.

Agency or Grievance
This is not mainly an immigration argument, though immigration is part of it. It is an argument about what kind of people we are choosing to become. A society that treats fixed prices, blind justice, and the individual as moral agents as optional luxuries will not keep the prosperity and liberty those practices produced. A politics that externalizes every failure and treats agency as a colonial fiction will not produce better outcomes in the Global South or at home. It will simply import the older pattern and call it justice.

The older mid-century Third Worldism at least claimed to seek independence and development on its own terms. The current Western version is different. It is a grievance that never resolves, because resolution would require acknowledging that culture, institutions, and choices matter. That acknowledgment is exactly what the ideology forbids.

Boreing ends on a note that is neither fatalistic nor triumphalist. None of this was inevitable, and none of it is irreversible. We built the fixed price. We built the jury. We built the father who turns in his own son because the truth outranks the blood. Those were choices. Choices can be made differently tomorrow.

The West is strange. That strangeness is the point. Forgetting it is how you lose it.

WNBA Avoids Defining “Woman”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:44:29 -0500

Credit: ESPN

A WNBA task force of team presidents and general managers met Wednesday and discussed transgender athlete participation. They produced no new eligibility policy.

The league’s statement afterward was careful and limited:

Today’s meeting covered a wide range of topics, including ongoing discussions on transgender athletes and the continued hate and vitriol directed at players online. We will continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months. We will approach these important conversations thoughtfully and in alignment with the values of our league. There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.

That is the full public position for now.

The current collective bargaining agreement says only that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” It supplies no further definition of “woman,” no reference to sex assigned at birth, no hormone thresholds, and no transition requirements. The league has never had a publicly detailed policy on transgender or intersex athletes. No transgender woman (someone male at birth who identifies as female) has ever played in the WNBA. Two nonbinary players who were female at birth have.

The immediate pressure came from two directions. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said in a July ESPN profile that she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” She later called the position “common sense.” Those comments produced small rallies and counter-rallies at Fever games.

Then two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, announced they identify as women and intend to declare for the 2027 WNBA draft. Their moves were widely understood as an attempt to force the league to clarify the vague language in its rules. The league’s statement appears to treat those declarations as the “bad-faith efforts” it denounces.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert had already told teams the issue would be discussed and that eligibility rules are collectively bargained. Any real change would require negotiation with the players’ association. The task force is expected to keep talking with stakeholders in the coming weeks and months.

The practical situation remains what it was: the category “women” is left undefined in the governing document of a league built around sex-segregated competition. That gap is what the current controversy keeps exposing. Institutions that rely on sex-based categories while declining to define the category invite exactly this kind of pressure—political, legal, and rhetorical. Whether the WNBA eventually draws a clearer line, and what that line looks like, is still unresolved.

Relevant links

WNBA task force stops short of new transgender athlete eligibility policy (Fox San Antonio / National News Desk)
WNBA task force discusses transgender athletes amid furor (ESPN)
WNBA denounces 'bad-faith' transgender debate and says league has no eligibility issues (Washington Post)
WNBA’s Inclusion Policy Is Too Vague Amid Trans Athlete Debate (Bloomberg Opinion)
Sophie Cunningham’s comments on transgender athletes (Sporting News)
Enes Kanter Freedom formally declares for 2027 WNBA Draft (OutKick / Fox News)
Royce White declares for 2027 WNBA Draft (OutKick / Fox News)

The Repairman Calls Out Tucker Carlson

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 23:21:48 -0500

The laptop story keeps expanding.

First came Tucker Carlson’s long interview with Hunter Biden, in which Hunter said he has no recollection of dropping a laptop off at a Delaware repair shop. Then came Ben Shapiro’s sharp reaction, mocking the two men as “silver spoon rich kids” complaining about elites while floating contested claims about the laptop’s origins.

Now the man at the center of the original repair-shop story has answered.

On Thursday morning, John Paul Mac Isaac appeared on the PBD Podcast.

Watch here: [VIDEO]

Mac Isaac is the owner of the Wilmington shop where the water-damaged laptop was left in 2019.

What Mac Isaac Says

Mac Isaac rejects Hunter’s claim that he has no memory of the drop-off. He says the story is documented — serial number, emails, phone records, and later court material all line up. He argues Hunter’s denial is part of an effort to rewrite the history of how the device entered the public record.

He is more pointed about Tucker. Mac Isaac says he had contact with Tucker’s team in the days after the New York Post story broke in 2020 and again later. He claims Tucker never pressed him hard on the details and that a producer once warned him not to stray from the preferred framing. Mac Isaac suggests personal history between Tucker and Hunter (they had known each other for years and moved in overlapping circles) helps explain the soft treatment in the recent interview. He calls it “running cover.”

Mac Isaac also describes the personal cost: years of lawsuits, financial pressure, and the feeling that he was abandoned once the political utility of the story faded. He presents himself as someone still defending the original chain of custody against what he sees as narrative revision.

How It Fits With the Other Two Pieces

In the Tucker interview, Hunter denied the drop-off and treated the origin story as messy and unreliable.
Shapiro attacked the interview as elite hypocrisy and dismissed the “Israelis pushed it” angle as conspiratorial.
Mac Isaac now attacks the interview from the other direction: he says the core factual claim about the laptop’s arrival at his shop is solid, and that Tucker failed to challenge it.

Three different voices, three different incentives, and still no single clean version of events.

The Real Divide

The laptop was always more than a device. It became a test of which institutions and media figures would protect which narratives. Six years later the same pattern is still visible: personal relationships, shifting political incentives, and competing claims about what actually happened in that repair shop.

Whether Mac Isaac’s account holds up under scrutiny is a separate question. What is clear is that the original story is still being contested in real time — by the son, by the interviewer, by the repairman, and by the commentators who have built careers on opposite sides of it.

Watch the Valuetainment segment. Then go back to the Tucker interview and Shapiro’s response. The contradictions are the point.

What Happened in Wisconsin?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:30:00 -0500

Bill O’Reilly breaks down the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a more conventional liberal, narrowly defeated Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialist who had led the polls for weeks. Final unofficial numbers had Crowley at roughly 39.8 percent and Hong at 39.4 percent—a margin of about 3,000 to 4,000 votes. Crowley had briefly dropped out, then re-entered with the endorsement of outgoing Governor Tony Evers. The result was a genuine upset.

O’Reilly’s core observation holds: even among Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin, the hard left still hits a ceiling. Hong’s record—past comments about canceling Thanksgiving, positions on police and ICE, and alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America platform—mattered. O’Reilly highlights a clip of DSA co-chair Megan Romer laying out long-term goals that include abolishing the Senate, transforming the presidency and Supreme Court, ending ICE, open borders with amnesty, defunding the Pentagon, largely abolishing prisons, and public ownership of major corporations. Those are not caricatures. They are the stated direction.

The urban-versus-rest-of-the-state pattern appeared again. Concentrated progressive strongholds can sustain radical candidates. Outside them, many Democratic voters still prefer someone who looks competitive in a swing-state general election. Crowley ran stronger in rural counties and his home base around Milwaukee. Hong carried the Madison orbit more comfortably but could not expand enough.

Polls missed it badly. Hong led by double digits in multiple surveys, including Marquette’s late July poll that had Crowley in single digits with a large undecided bloc. Late-deciding voters broke toward the more moderate option.

Conservative outlets are already noting the familiar Milwaukee “midnight ballot dump.” Absentee ballots from the city are counted centrally and reported late—often after midnight—because state law restricts pre-processing. There was also a human error with USB drives that delayed the numbers further. Crowley already held a lead before those Milwaukee absentees came in; the late batch widened his margin rather than flipping the race. The process is opaque and routinely produces drama, which is why it feeds suspicion every cycle. In this case it helped the more establishment Democrat over the socialist.

Crowley now faces Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany in November. Wisconsin remains a real battleground. The primary does not decide the general, but it offers a clear data point: when Democratic voters had a real choice between a conventional liberal and an open democratic socialist, a majority of those who showed up preferred the former.

The socialist project keeps testing how far it can push. Wisconsin just pushed back.

RELEVANT LINKS

Primary race coverage

How Crowley Eked Out a Win in the Wisconsin Governor Primary — New York Times
David Crowley pulls off upset over Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor — NBC News
In shocking comeback, David Crowley wins Democratic primary for governor — Wisconsin Public Radio
Moderate Crowley Wins Wisconsin Primary in Upset — Bloomberg
David Crowley wins Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s governor in upset over progressive Francesca Hong — The Guardian
David Crowley Wins an Upset with a Familiar Coalition Behind Him — Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog
Crowley pulls off stunning victory over Hong in Wisconsin Democratic primary — USA Today

Milwaukee ballot dump / late results

Why Milwaukee’s election results took so long in the Wisconsin primary — Votebeat (best detailed explanation of the USB/human-error delay)
August 2026 posts on the primary and “ballot dump” — Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog (clearest numbers and context on how the late Milwaukee absentees affected the race)
Crowley leads Dem gubernatorial primary after Milwaukee County absentee results added in — WisPolitics
Milwaukee Election Results Delayed by Download Error — Urban Milwaukee
Download error in Milwaukee delays results in Wisconsin primary — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Shapiro Tears Into the Tucker–Hunter Biden Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0500

Ben Shapiro has now weighed in on Tucker Carlson’s long interview with Hunter Biden.

You can watch Shapiro’s segment here: [VIDEO]

The title of the clip is straightforward: “Tucker and Hunter Biden: Same World, Same Agenda.”

Shapiro’s Core Point

Shapiro’s reaction is sharp and mocking. He frames the interview as two privileged men from the same elite class sitting in a staged cabin in Maine, complaining about how the elite class is victimizing ordinary people.

In a post promoting the segment he wrote:

“Hey, look, two silver spoon rich kids sitting in a prop cabin in Maine to talk about how the elite class is victimizing you…and also, why the Joos did Hunter Biden’s laptop and ackshually Candace Owens is just the best. Viva la revolucion!”

That captures the tone of the whole response.

What Shapiro Emphasizes

Shared background: Shapiro stresses that Tucker and Hunter are not outsiders. They come from the same social world, have known each other for years, and both benefited from elite connections. He notes past emails in which Tucker sought Hunter’s help with college admissions for his son.
The laptop claim: Shapiro is particularly dismissive of the suggestion that “the Israelis” were the ones pushing the laptop story (or the false claims about its contents). He treats it as conspiratorial “slop.”
Anti-elite posturing: The central criticism is hypocrisy. Two men who grew up with every advantage are presenting themselves as truth-tellers against the system that raised and enriched them.
Praise for Candace Owens: Shapiro notes that both men spoke positively about Owens and finds the mutual admiration revealing.

He describes the conversation as “exponential stupidity” and “pathetic,” and argues that it reveals more about the leadership class than about any genuine populist revolt.

Why It Matters

Shapiro’s response highlights a growing split on the right. One side (Carlson and some of his orbit) is increasingly willing to platform unlikely guests and entertain narratives that challenge older conservative consensus, including on Israel and elite power. The other side (Shapiro and much of the institutional right) sees that approach as reckless, conspiratorial, and ultimately unserious.

Whether you side with Shapiro’s critique or find the original interview more interesting, the exchange is useful. It shows how quickly the lines inside conservatism are shifting—and how personal history, class, and foreign policy remain flashpoints.

Watch both the original interview and Shapiro’s response. The contrast is the story.

Hunter Biden Sits Down With Tucker Carlson

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:03:48 -0500

On Monday, Tucker Carlson posted a more than two-hour interview with Hunter Biden. Hunter is the son of the 46th P.O.T.U.S., Joe Biden, and for years he has been known mainly as the addict son who somehow left a laptop in a computer repair shop.

A few years ago this would have raised my eyebrows. Tucker was clearly on a different side then. The idea of him sitting down for a long, largely civil conversation with Hunter Biden would have surprised me. Now it doesn’t. The interview still got my attention, but for different reasons.

To be honest, I never thought much about the laptop story beyond what it seemed to show about control—or the lack of it—around President Biden. I’m not interested in piling on the former president. He is very ill; reports say his cancer has spread to his bones. That said, I do believe his one term was rough on the country, and we are still dealing with the consequences. Even so, I have never fully understood the lasting significance people attach to Hunter’s laptop.

There are two sides to every story. That is why I am sharing the interview. Below is the video, followed by a short synopsis of the points that stood out.

Watch the interview here: [VIDEO]

Short Synopsis

Hunter called Donald Trump the central problem, not merely a symptom. “The one existential threat I think we face as a country is Donald Trump,” he said. “I’m not this believer that Trump is merely the symptom of a disease. I believe Trump is central to why this disease has gone from a local epidemic to a pandemic in the USA.” He framed Trump as a transformational figure who had a chance to change the country for the better and instead made everything about himself. Carlson did not strongly push back.

On the laptop, Hunter repeated that he has no recollection of dropping one off at the Delaware repair shop and did not believe the device was his when the New York Post story first appeared. He acknowledged that most of the emails and material are authentic and his, but insisted none show his father directing business or committing crimes. Carlson added a newer claim: he believed the laptop contents were real from the start, yet the false allegation that it contained evidence of abuse of minors was brought to him at Fox by people connected to Benjamin Netanyahu. He said pressure not to criticize Israel helped turn the default explanation into “the Russians.”

Hunter also spent significant time on addiction and recovery. At his lowest point in Los Angeles—isolated and using heavily—he met his future wife Melissa through two strangers at a hotel pool. He texted her at 2:30 a.m., later apologized, and on their first meeting told her both that he was in love with her and that he was addicted to crack. She said it ends today. The crack stopped within a week, the alcohol within a few weeks. He dates his sobriety to June 1 and calls the whole sequence a kind of miracle. The worst damage of the addiction, he said, was his absence from his children.

Taken together, the interview is less a standard political appearance than a series of refusals: refusal to treat Trump as a mere symptom, refusal to accept the simplest versions of the laptop story, and refusal to keep the personal completely separate from the political. Whether you accept Hunter’s framing is another question. The conversation is worth hearing in full.

Confessions of a DSA Defector

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:34:11 -0500

Former Democratic Socialists of America organizer Jake Altman sat down with The Free Press for a clear-eyed look at how the group changed.

Watch the interview: [VIDEO]

Altman joined in 2013 looking for pragmatic social democracy after Occupy Wall Street. What he found over the next decade was a steady slide toward radicalism. The membership got younger, the anti-communists left or were driven out, and the cadre grew more comfortable with Leninist tactics and open hostility to American institutions.

He finally quit in 2022 after DSA blamed U.S. “imperialism” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The new platform language—ending the presidency and Supreme Court, abolishing prisons, canceling all debt, closing overseas bases, lifting sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran—makes the direction plain.

This is not Scandinavian social democracy. It is a revolutionary project that has learned how to win primaries and pressure the Democratic Party. The pattern is familiar: moderate language first, then the hard-liners take control.

Worth watching.

Ben Shapiro: Wokeness Evolved Into Something Worse

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:19:56 -0500

Ben Shapiro’s latest segment cuts through the recent attempt to memory-hole the last decade. The title says it plainly: Wokeness Didn’t Die. It Evolved Into Something Worse.

The trigger is a clip of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on ABC’s This Week. Asked about a fellow DSA-aligned candidate’s old radical posts (defund/abolish the police, cancel Thanksgiving, etc.), AOC smiled and reached for a line floating around progressive circles: “Woke 1 was crazy.” She framed the excesses of 2020 as a COVID-era fever dream, insisted people have moved on, and suggested we should judge candidates by what they say now.

Shapiro is not buying the soft landing. He treats the remark as confirmation that the same ideological core is still operating—only the packaging has been upgraded.

Woke 1.0 was the explicit racial project: America as systemically racist from 1619 onward, institutions as vehicles of white supremacy, the 2020 crime spike and $2 billion in damage treated as the price of progress, careers destroyed over speech. It was popular among a certain class of white liberals and some activists, but it ran into a basic problem—most Americans do not experience their country as a racial hierarchy and rejected the self-accusation.

Woke 2.0, in Shapiro’s telling, shifts the target. Racism is no longer the original sin; capitalism and “Western imperialism” are. Free markets produce colonialism, inequality, and global violence. Gaza becomes the new moral centerpiece. The language moves from Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi toward figures more comfortable with anti-American framing and older Marxist critiques of imperialism (the lineage running through Hobson and Lenin is not subtle). It is less about personal guilt for being white and more about collective guilt for being Western and prosperous.

That shift is tactically smarter. It avoids the immediate self-refutation of telling ordinary people they are irredeemably racist. It can hitch itself to economic anxiety, institutional distrust, and foreign-policy grievances. And it still keeps the same adversarial stance toward the American project.

The philosophical point is older than the branding. Ideas that fail in one form rarely vanish; they adapt. When a doctrine meets resistance, it often sheds the parts that are hardest to defend in public while preserving the deeper claim that the existing order is illegitimate. “Woke 1 was crazy” is not a repudiation. It is a rebrand.

Watch the segment. Shapiro walks through the AOC clip, the historical continuity, and why the new version may prove more durable than the old one.

Watch the segment here: [VIDEO]

The question is not whether the language has softened. It is whether the underlying diagnosis of America has changed at all.

A Close Call Over Washington, and the Shadow of Last Year’s Disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 6 Aug 2026 09:00:04 -0500

[VIDEO] This report from Washington, D.C. was posted to the ABC 7 Chicago YouTube channel.

Federal aviation officials and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating a safety incident involving Marine One while President Trump was on board.

On Tuesday afternoon the presidential helicopter lifted off from the Ellipse near the White House, headed for Joint Base Andrews. Moments earlier a commercial airliner departed from Reagan National. The two aircraft closed to roughly 500 vertical feet—well inside FAA separation standards. Marine One pilots had issued multiple three-minute warnings; controllers neither acknowledged them nor held the commercial traffic. The FAA says the aircraft were never on a collision course and the president was never in danger. Still, the lapse is under formal review.

The timing is hard to ignore. Eighteen months ago, almost in the same airspace, an Army Black Hawk and an American Airlines regional jet collided over the Potomac. All 67 people died. That crash—the deadliest U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2001—was later traced by the NTSB to a string of systemic failures: a poorly designed helicopter route that allowed dangerously small separation, an over-reliance on visual see-and-avoid at night, altitude-instrument limitations on the military aircraft, and a control tower stretched thin by combined positions. The route was closed. Mixed helicopter-and-jet operations were sharply restricted. Visual separation near the airport was curtailed.

In the days after the 2025 crash, the conversation quickly turned political. President Trump and others raised the possibility that diversity hiring practices had eroded standards among controllers and military aviators. Online, the speculation focused more sharply on the female Army pilot who was undergoing an evaluation flight that night. Official investigators never adopted that explanation. Their findings stayed on route design, procedures, equipment, and training. The human and institutional failures were real enough without needing a single demographic scapegoat.

What these two events share is a reminder that complex systems fail in layers. Crowded airspace, aging equipment, night operations, and the constant pressure to keep traffic moving create thin margins. When those margins are breached, the public understandably wants a clear villain. Sometimes the clearer truth is that no single person was uniquely incompetent; the system itself had been allowed to drift. Competence still matters intensely. So does honest diagnosis. The recent Marine One incident shows the residual risk has not vanished. The question is whether the lessons from last year were absorbed deeply enough to keep the next near-miss from becoming something worse.

The Left’s Incomplete Night

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 5 Aug 2026 11:23:51 -0500

This Politico piece captured the night while the Michigan U.S. Senate race was still too close to call and progressives were realizing they hadn’t delivered the blowout many expected.

Yesterday’s Michigan primaries

Progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly beat moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary. The race was far closer than late polls predicted.

In Michigan’s 7th District, Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence won the Democratic House primary after two moderates split the vote.

In the 13th District, democratic socialist Donavan McKinney narrowly unseated incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar.

Cori Bush’s comeback bid

Former “Squad” member and democratic socialist Cori Bush tried to reclaim the St. Louis-area House seat she lost in 2024. She faced the same opponent who beat her then, incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell.

Bush ran again as a sharp critic of U.S. support for Israel and as a progressive standard-bearer. The race drew heavy outside spending, much of it from pro-Israel groups backing Bell. She lost decisively, roughly 59% to 37%.

It was one of the clearer setbacks for the progressive left on a night that otherwise produced mixed results for that faction.

h/t Newsalert

Vince Dao’s take

Vince Dao covers the same results and frames El-Sayed’s thin win and Bush’s loss as a reality check for DSA-backed candidates. He argues the night exposed their vulnerabilities outside deep-blue urban strongholds: [VIDEO]

Further thoughts

The conventional wisdom right now is that the energy is with these so-called Democrat Socialist candidates around the country. But El-Sayed’s win was no landslide. The margin was thin, and the expected progressive wave never fully materialized.

I need to look more closely at the numbers in other places where DSA-backed candidates succeeded. Michigan may lean blue in presidential years at times, but it remains a true battleground—Trump carried it narrowly in both 2016 and 2024. That makes El-Sayed’s path to the Senate far from automatic against Republican Mike Rogers this November.

The Side of the Story They Buried — Tou Thao, Minneapolis Police Officer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 3 Aug 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao gave a long-form interview on the Yada Yada Gold podcast and spoke with unusual directness about four things that still get little sustained attention: the plea deal he rejected, what he was doing and thinking on May 25, 2020, the reality of federal prison, and the incentives that reward those who adopt the preferred narrative.

Minneapolis Police Officer Tou Thao in 2020 via ABCNews

The Plea Deal

Thao says Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office offered him a deal that would have meant little to no prison time. He turned it down. In his telling, accepting it would have required him to affirm a version of events he did not believe was true. He frames the decision as a matter of principle and faith: he wanted to be able to go to sleep knowing he had done what he believed was right, and he would not allow someone else’s judgment to be forced on him if he considered it incorrect. Standing firm under pressure, he says, is part of that faith.

He is open about the cost. Refusing the deal meant more time away from his wife and young children. Other officers, he notes, made different calculations. He could not. In court years earlier he had already put the same stance on the record, telling a judge that accepting a plea would be “a lie and a sin.” The podcast version adds the political context: the offer came in a period when making the case quietly disappear would have been convenient.

The Day Itself

Thao’s account of the arrest centers on his assigned role and his state of mind. He was handling crowd control—keeping bystanders at a distance, standard procedure when officers are dealing with a resistive subject. He says he trusted the officers who had hands on Floyd because they had sworn the same oath. One line he recalls directing at the gathering crowd: “This is why you don’t do drugs. There’s a man dying right over there, bro.”

In the federal trial the focus shifted to his mental state. Prosecutors argued that certain remarks showed he was directing or endorsing what the others were doing. Thao’s response is blunt: he was describing what he was thinking in the moment, not issuing orders. He returns repeatedly to the same principle that shaped the plea decision—he would not accept responsibility for actions that were not his, and he would not affirm a story he did not believe was accurate. The body-camera footage from his perspective was not released to the public for months. Thao and the hosts treat that delay as deliberate narrative management.

Prison and “If We Die, Then the Truth Dies”

Thao spent more than three years inside. He describes entering general population briefly before the threats became concrete. He was not surprised when Derek Chauvin was stabbed multiple times. In his view, people in higher places preferred the officers silenced. The line he uses is direct: if we die, then the truth dies. Once the last witnesses who refuse the official story are gone, the competing account disappears with them.

He chose not to have his wife and children visit. The searches, the environment, the images—he did not want those memories attached to them. He took the sentence one day at a time, leaning on faith rather than any expectation of earthly vindication. The “truth dies” remark is not melodrama. It is a practical observation about how inconvenient facts are handled when the people who carry them can be removed.

The Woke Narrative, Promotion, and the Walz Pardon

Thao is clearest when he talks about incentives. He says he could have taken the easy route—sided with the prevailing narrative, expressed the expected remorse, played ball. In that scenario, he believes he could have risen inside the department, possibly even to chief. He points to others who aligned with the story and were elevated. The system, as he experienced it, rewards those who stay inside the narrative and punishes those who step outside it.

He closes with the Tim Walz pardon of a Hmong man convicted of sexually abusing a young girl. Walz framed the crime in cultural terms. Thao calls that framing insulting to the Hmong community and notes the obvious contrast: the same political apparatus that pursued the officers with maximum force found room for leniency when it suited a different constituency. He treats the pardon as evidence of selective justice rather than consistent principle.

The interview does not ask listeners to declare Thao a hero. It records what one of the four officers says he saw, why he refused to say what was demanded of him, and what he believes the system actually rewards. In a culture that still treats the 2020 narrative as settled doctrine, that record is worth hearing.

Full episode: [VIDEO]

Ben Shapiro Breaks Down Voting Rights Under the Constitution

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 2 Aug 2026 12:58:12 -0500

Ben Shapiro released a sharp video today that cuts straight to a point I raised two months ago: What The Constitution REALLY Says About Voting Rights.

The core argument is simple and historically solid. The original Constitution does not create a broad federal right to vote. Article I, Section 2 ties House voter qualifications to whatever the states set for their own most numerous legislative body. Article I, Section 4 leaves the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections primarily to the states. Article II leaves the method of appointing presidential electors to state legislatures. The Framers built a republic with deliberate filters against pure majoritarianism. Federalist 10’s warning about faction was not decorative.

The later amendments changed the landscape only in specific, negative ways:

15th Amendment: no denial on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
19th: no denial on account of sex
24th: no poll tax in federal elections
26th: no denial to citizens 18 and older

These are anti-discrimination rules. They do not transfer ordinary qualification authority (photo ID, registration rules, citizenship verification, ballot chain-of-custody standards) from the states to Washington. Neutral, evenly applied requirements are not discrimination against a protected class.

Shapiro spends meaningful time on the same Supreme Court decision I examined in June—Louisiana v. Callais. In that post, Democrats’ Strategy vs. Black Representation: The Root and IL-4, I looked at how the Court struck down a second majority-Black district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The decision limited the ability to use the Voting Rights Act as a permanent tool for race-based map drawing when it collides with the Equal Protection Clause. I noted the practical dilemma this creates for Democrats: packing reliable Black voters into a few districts can help guarantee some Black representation while making surrounding districts easier for Republicans to win. Spreading those voters might help the party’s overall House numbers, but it risks diluting the very representation the VRA was meant to protect.

Shapiro’s constitutional framing explains why the Court moved that way. The VRA’s original purpose was to stop discriminatory denial of the vote. It was never a blank check for perpetual racial sorting of voters. When race becomes the dominant, enduring map-drawing criterion, it starts violating the same equal-protection principle the 14th Amendment was written to enforce. That is the tension I described with Illinois’ 4th District “earmuffs” shape—an ethnic opportunity district created under the VRA that has always been more about engineered outcomes than compact communities of interest.

The same logic applies to current fights over the SAVE Act, voter ID, and ballot harvesting. Requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote is not “Jim Crow.” It is an exercise of the authority the Constitution left with the states (and Congress under its limited election powers) to ensure that only eligible citizens vote. The 2005 bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission already flagged third-party ballot collection as a serious chain-of-custody risk. Treating every integrity measure as an attack on “voting rights” collapses the distinction between non-discrimination and a policy wishlist of automatic registration, no-excuse mail ballots without verification, and race-conscious districting as a permanent entitlement.

I remain skeptical of both parties when they dress pure power plays in the language of voting rights. Mid-decade redistricting is mostly about who controls the House, not high principle. But the constitutional baseline matters. The document protects eligible citizens from discrimination on the listed grounds and leaves the rest of election administration largely to the states. If we want a different system—one that federalizes more of the process or treats racial proportional representation as a permanent right—we have an amendment process for that. Pretending the current Constitution already contains those features does not make it so.

The video is worth watching. It lines up cleanly with the questions I was already asking in June about majority-minority districts, packing versus spreading, and the limits of using race as the primary map-drawing tool. The Constitution is clearer on these points than the daily political rhetoric admits.

Watch the full video below: [VIDEO]

Spain’s Ceuta Border Collapse: Trump Calls It an “Invasion”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:50:38 -0500

Yesterday and today, Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta was hit by one of the largest single migrant surges in recent European memory.

Thousands of people (Spanish Interior Ministry figures later put the total who crossed or attempted to cross since Thursday morning around 50,000) poured in from Morocco. Many swam around the border fence. Reception centers for unaccompanied minors hit 2,400% of capacity. Local authorities declared a humanitarian and social emergency. At least nine people died in the water. Spain deployed military units to back up the Civil Guard. Morocco cooperated on rapid returns, and tens of thousands were already turned back by Friday.

President Trump addressed it during a cabinet meeting at Camp David. Here are the key lines:

“I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country… hundreds of thousands of people.”
“That same thing’s going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected, except worse. Much bigger… our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time.”
“They’re coming in by the tens of thousands. They’re just invading the country… weak law, bad management, but very liberal law… That will look good compared to what’s going to happen to the United States.”

Watch President Trump's full remarks: [VIDEO]

The people crossing are overwhelmingly from Morocco (and some from Algeria and further south via Morocco). Demographically, that means the overwhelming majority are Muslim. Spain already has a Muslim population in the low millions, heavily concentrated in certain regions and the enclaves. Integration has never been seamless.

Spain’s current government has pursued relatively open policies—regularizations of hundreds of thousands and a preference for cooperation over hard deterrence. When the pressure arrives, the local population feels it first. The rapid returns this time show that leverage with Morocco still works when both sides decide it must. The scale of the surge itself is the policy signal.

Trump is using the images the same way he has used American border footage for years: as a concrete demonstration of what happens when a government loses control of who enters its territory. The pictures are hard to spin—a European city overwhelmed, military called in, people swimming the fence, bodies recovered.

Europe keeps running the same experiment. The results keep looking the same. America does not have to re-run it.

Fauci Takes the Fifth 111 Times

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:57:06 -0500

The below meme says it better than most commentary. A guy offers basic health advice and gets told he’s not a doctor. Then comes the punchline: “Your doctor invoked the 5th 111 times.”

Chris Cavallini IG

Yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci was less a fact-finding session and more performance art. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over and over—refusing to answer even basic questions. At one point Rand Paul asked what day of the week it was. Fauci still took the Fifth.

The hearing’s most dramatic moment came early. One of Fauci’s attorneys, David Schertler, repeatedly tried to interject from the table. Paul had already told the lawyers they were not recognized and were not to sit at the witness table. When Schertler kept speaking, Paul ordered security to remove him. “You are not recognized, sir. Security, please remove him from the room.” Capitol Police escorted the attorney out. Applause followed in some corners of the room.

You can watch the raw footage here [VIDEO]

While that was unfolding, the White House posted two words — “The truth.” — with a link to a page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19.” The page lays out the case that the virus most likely came from a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, cites gain-of-function research, notes early illnesses among researchers, and criticizes efforts (including those tied to Fauci) to push a natural-origin narrative and shut down alternative discussion.

The truth. https://t.co/nWMBrHOpHH 👀
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 29, 2026

Bill O’Reilly’s breakdown of the hearing captures the bigger picture. He walks through the same issues that have dominated the last few days: the more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s private diary that Paul released over the weekend, the private notes that contradict what Fauci told the public about school closures and lockdowns, the early discussions about a possible lab origin, and Fauci’s own reflections on his sudden media fame. O’Reilly calls him a longtime “swamp creature” who flip-flopped on masks, pushed long school closures while European children stayed in class, and now sits protected by a late-term Biden pardon.

You can watch O’Reilly’s segment here [VIDEO]

The diary entries remain the most damaging material. In March 2020 Fauci privately recorded conversations in which he said he “convinced” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to close city schools and noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office was moving to shut schools, bars, and restaurants based on Fauci’s television appearances. Years later Fauci publicly insisted he had “nothing to do” with school closures. Those private notes versus public claims are now the central exhibit.

Add the attorney’s removal and the wall of Fifth Amendment answers, and the hearing becomes a single image: a once-unquestioned public health authority refusing to answer questions while his lawyer is physically removed for disrupting the proceeding.

This is not the end of the story. Contempt discussions are already floating, more diary pages may still surface, and the political fight over what the private record actually shows is only getting started. The video of O’Reilly’s analysis is worth watching in full if you want the sharper edge of the commentary. The clip of the attorney being escorted out speaks for itself.

More to come as the documents and the fallout keep rolling in.

Ben Shapiro on the Democratic Civil War Getting Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Ben Shapiro’s latest episode zeroes in on the mess inside the Democratic Party right now. The title is direct: “The Democratic Civil War Is Getting Ugly.” It lands at a moment when the party’s internal fractures are no longer subtle.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The core of the piece is straightforward. The Democratic National Committee is broke—roughly $2 million in debt while the RNC sits on well over $100 million. Party leaders have resorted to asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterms. Ken Martin, the DNC chair, reportedly threw his phone at a junior aide’s desk in frustration. Donors with money are routing it around the party apparatus to candidates and outside groups. The institutional center is hollowed out.

Into that vacuum steps the Democratic Socialists of America and their orbit. Shapiro treats this as more than ordinary factional fighting. The DSA is not simply pushing the party left; it is advancing a different theory of what the country should become. Moderates like Pete Buttigieg urge the party to talk about what it is for rather than attack the radicals. Rahm Emanuel warns that the Bernie-wing nominees saddle Democrats in swing districts with positions that make general elections harder. Bernie Sanders fires back that the establishment is defending a status quo voters have already rejected.

The clearest proxy fight right now is the Michigan Senate primary. Gretchen Whitmer has endorsed Congresswoman Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed. Stevens is already well to the left by national standards, yet she is treated as insufficiently pure—especially on Israel. El-Sayed carries the progressive energy, the DSA-adjacent endorsements, and a record that includes positions Shapiro flags as far outside the mainstream. Polls and prediction markets are telling different stories. The outcome will signal how far the party is willing to go in safe or lean-Democratic territory.

This is the same dynamic the blog has been tracking for weeks: the DSA’s willingness to treat American institutions as obstacles rather than inheritance, the reluctance of institutional Democrats to draw hard lines, and the practical consequences when the loudest energy in a party sits well outside the median voter. Parties that cannot resolve their internal arguments about first principles tend to lose the ability to govern or even to campaign effectively.

Shapiro’s framing is that the civil war is real and that the radicals are currently better organized and more motivated. Whether the institutional side can still impose discipline in places that matter for the 2026 map remains an open question. The Michigan primary is one early test. There will be others.

Competing Ideas, Forgotten History

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:30:00 -0500

At the time I was in eighth grade the Soviet Union had already fallen. The main communist nation, often called the Evil Empire, had collapsed. At the time it seemed reasonable to assume its successor state, Russia, would eventually become a democratic country much like the United States. We know that transition was never simple. Russia today is a different animal from the Soviet Union—more authoritarian state capitalism than classical Marxism-Leninism—but the original system’s failure remains instructive.

Right now, if you follow commentators on the right—Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, and others—they are talking about the energy on the radical left, mainly those who call themselves Democratic Socialists.

Glenn Beck lays out the sharper ideological critique here: [VIDEO]

Beck’s segment, “How the Radical Left has Gone Completely Off the Rails,” frames the issue as a deeper conflict inside the Democratic Party over socialism, constitutional limits, and the direction of the left.

Bill O’Reilly’s segment, “The Voting Divide & Socialism Rising?,” takes a more observational approach, focusing on the growing gap between big-city progressive strongholds and the rest of the country.

Here’s the O’Reilly segment: [VIDEO]

In that segment, O’Reilly uses Minnesota as a case study of what he calls “Loonville” and ends by asking whether the rise of Democratic Socialists is just a fad or a growing trend.

I wrote earlier about how many of these Democratic Socialists want to upend the system of separation of powers and checks and balances. They go further. Official DSA platform language and working-group documents call for steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system, abolishing ICE, legalizing migration with broad amnesty, and shifting control of the means of production toward democratic or public ownership. Recent platform language has also included structural changes such as abolishing the Senate and replacing the Electoral College. That is not a caricature; it is what they have put in writing.

I do not want to join the pure hyperventilation over communism suddenly rearing its head in America. The philosophy is gaining traction for very real reasons. Affordability is the core one. The rent is too damn high. Incomes have not kept pace with housing, insurance, and everyday costs. For a lot of younger people the idea that the state should simply provide more of these things feels like a practical answer rather than an abstract ideology.

America is still supposed to be a marketplace of ideas. Communism and socialism, however much many of us detest them, have to compete in that marketplace. We already have extensive evidence from the twentieth century—and from more recent cases—of why the full version does not work in the real world. When the ideas are more accepted by younger people, it suggests we have not adequately educated them on that history or on how capitalism and constitutional democracy actually function. That educational gap is part of the problem.

The philosophy still looks like a serious threat. Worse, many of its advocates are running and winning in Democratic primaries even when their views sit well outside the party’s median. Ben Shapiro has made this point repeatedly on his podcast: Democrats often lack strong internal resistance to far-left candidates. Large numbers of voters will simply vote blue no matter who. Others cannot bring themselves to support a Republican under any circumstances. In low-turnout urban primaries, that dynamic gives more extreme candidates a real advantage.

O’Reilly’s segment ends by asking whether this is just a fad or a growing trend that is here to stay. His guest called it both. That seems right. The organizational infrastructure is real—DSA chapters, primary challenges, aligned mayors and legislators—and it has produced visible wins in certain cities. At the same time, much of the broader appeal still tracks more closely with housing costs and economic frustration than with a fully developed theory of the means of production. If those material pressures ease, the emotional fuel can diminish. If they do not, and if the governing experiments continue to produce the kinds of results O’Reilly highlighted in Minnesota, the trend has room to harden.

The ideas are competing. The historical record is still available. Whether enough people still know that record is the open question.

Britain Is Finished: Peter Hitchens on Triggernometry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0500

There’s a new Triggernometry interview with Peter Hitchens that dropped over the weekend. The title is blunt: “We Live in the Age of Delusions.” He spends a good portion of it diagnosing Britain’s condition with the kind of clarity most politicians still refuse to touch.

Check out the Triggernometry episode with Peter Hitchens here: [VIDEO]

The Country Is Finished

Hitchens’ opening diagnosis is not soft. The country is finished. It’s just a question of how and when that fact becomes obvious to everyone. The direction is downwards at an accelerating pace. Everything current policy assumes rests on an overestimate of remaining wealth and power. When the pretense collapses—through currency failure, inflation, or the costs of another war—the rest shrinks with it.

The 1914 Turning Point

He traces the decisive break to the First World War. Before 1914, Britain was a creditor nation with vast overseas investments, a relatively stable society, and real naval strength. Entering a Russo-German war over interests that were never vital cost the country almost everything. The best of several generations were cut down. Debts piled up. The United States forced naval limitations and the end of the Japanese alliance. The long slope of decline began.

The Second World War only completed the transfer of power. Britain was on the winning side, Hitchens notes, but it was not the victor. It handed the future to the United States and the Soviet Union. The afterglow of that sacrifice still shapes the national psychology. People wanted to believe the “finest hour” had preserved great-power status. It had not.

Delusions of Grandeur and Military Reality

Britain still behaves as if it is a great power. It is not. Elites overestimate the country’s wealth, its military reach, and its global importance by a wide margin. That overestimate drives policy.

A small island off the northwest coast of Europe that spends like a Cold War superpower on submarine-launched nuclear deterrents will eventually bankrupt itself. The same delusion pushes elites toward European wars and even talk of entanglement with Iran. Hitchens is direct: there is a determination in the governing class to get Britain into another large conflict. Treating Russia’s corrupt and incompetent military as a credible threat to the British coast is another form of the same self-delusion.

Economic and Cultural Foundations

The economic picture matches the strategic one. The government borrows to pay interest on existing debt. Industrial capacity was largely destroyed. Education has been trashed. The currency loses value steadily.

Layered underneath is the deeper cultural shift. The state has steadily substituted itself for the married family. That project is expensive, ineffective at raising children, and has left the country with fewer trained minds capable of recognizing reality when it arrives. Voting itself has become irrational. People punish one set of failures by installing parties committed to repeating them under different branding.

Facing the Limits

None of this is presented as inevitable in some mystical sense. Hitchens is describing choices. Entering 1914 was a choice. Pretending the postwar settlement left Britain a first-rank power was a choice. Continuing to spend and posture as if the resources still exist is a choice. The refusal to face the country’s actual size and strength is the common thread.

There is a larger political point here that travels beyond Britain. Nations that refuse to match their ambitions to their means eventually discover the mismatch the hard way. The alternative is not isolation or despair. It is the harder work of recognizing limits, repairing what can still be repaired, and stopping the performance of power that no longer exists.

Hitchens does not offer cheerful prescriptions. He offers a clean diagnosis. In an age of delusions, that is rarer than it should be.

A 2021 History Lesson That Still Exposes the Gaza Propaganda

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 23:58:00 -0500

There’s a Ben Shapiro video from June 2021 that walks through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from biblical times forward. It’s well over five years old now. The title is blunt: “Here’s THE TRUTH About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (A Comprehensive History).” It covers Jewish historical connection to the land, the Roman renaming of the area, the absence of a prior independent Palestinian state, the repeated Arab rejections of partition and peace offers, and the pattern of wars and terrorism aimed at Israel’s elimination rather than coexistence.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The video predates the current Gaza operation by more than two years. That operation began after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre— the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. What followed has stretched nearly three years: intense fighting, hostage crises, ceasefires that partially held or frayed, territorial control shifts inside Gaza, and a humanitarian disaster that Hamas has long used as both shield and propaganda tool. As of mid-2026 the situation remains fluid under the framework of later diplomatic efforts, with Israeli forces still holding substantial portions of the Strip and low-level violence continuing.

What has not changed is the propaganda. Accusations of “genocide” against Israel have been repeated so often and so carelessly that the word has been emptied of meaning. Genocide requires specific intent to destroy a people in whole or in part. Israel’s actions—warnings before strikes, efforts (however imperfect) to limit civilian casualties while targeting an enemy that embeds among them, and the simple fact that Gaza’s population has not been eliminated—do not meet that standard. The charge functions less as legal analysis and more as a moral weapon: it reframes a war started by Hamas’s deliberate massacre and charter commitment to Israel’s destruction into a story of pure Israeli villainy. It also conveniently sidesteps Hamas’s own documented use of human shields, diversion of aid, and rejection of every serious peace offer that would have required recognizing a Jewish state.

History is not a morality play written yesterday. The 2021 video is useful precisely because it forces the viewer to confront the longer arc instead of the latest slogan. People who treat the conflict as beginning in 1967, or 1948, or even 2023 are usually not interested in history. They are interested in a narrative that assigns permanent guilt to one side and permanent innocence to the other. That is not analysis. It is propaganda with a body count attached.

The facts on the ground remain stubborn. Israel exists. It has the right to defend itself. Its enemies have repeatedly chosen rejection and violence over state-building and compromise. Until that choice changes, the cycle continues—and the word “genocide” will keep being deployed as a substitute for serious thought.

Trump: Ten Years After the Nomination

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:11:29 -0500

Ten years ago on July 21, 2016, Donald Trump stood on the stage in Cleveland and officially accepted the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY: Donald J. Trump officially accepts the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

The rest is history. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/naiiOQSAMJ
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 22, 2026

The rest, as the White House Rapid Response account put it this week, is history.

A few months ago I wrote about the moment that started it all: the Golden Escalator ride at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015. That post (linked below) was my personal look back at how a real-estate developer and reality-TV host somehow broke through a crowded Republican field and then defeated Hillary Clinton. I admitted I didn’t see it coming. I was working two jobs, not deeply engaged in politics, and figured executive experience (preferably as a governor) was the bare minimum for the presidency. Trump had none of that on paper.

Yet the escalator moment became iconic, and the nomination acceptance speech thirteen months later marked the formal handover of the party to a very different kind of candidate. Looking back from 2026, both dates feel like bookends of a political realignment that is still playing out.

The escalator launched the campaign. The Cleveland speech locked in the nomination. Everything that followed — the 2016 victory, the first term, the 2020 loss, the 2024 comeback — traces back to those two moments.

I still didn’t vote for Trump that year (Gary Johnson got my vote), but I can recognize the historical weight. Ten years on, the country remains sharply divided, yet the conversation that began on that escalator and was formalized in Cleveland continues to shape nearly every major political fight we have today.

Previous post: A Personal Look Back at the 2016 Presidential Race

Loonville: When Progressive Governance Loses the Plot on Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 23:51:20 -0500

Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points Memo on the July 21 No Spin News episode zeroed in on Minnesota and called it what he sees: Loonville. The claim is straightforward. Rough progressives now control roughly fifteen states. In those places, ideology has crowded out ordinary standards of accountability, crime, and common sense. Minnesota, once a more measured place, has become one of the clearest examples.

Watch July 21, 2026 No Spin News here: [VIDEO]

O’Reilly focuses first on Governor Tim Walz. He describes Walz as a far-left progressive ideologue. The concrete case is Tou Lue Vang, a Hmong man from Laos convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He repeatedly sexually abused a girl beginning when she was ten. He received probation rather than prison. In June 2026 the Minnesota Board of Pardons—Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the state Supreme Court chief justice—voted to erase the conviction. The board cited a letter of forgiveness from the victim and immigration concerns. The pardon removed the legal basis for his pending deportation.

O’Reilly’s reaction is blunt. The board effectively decided the crime no longer mattered. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and federal authorities then revoked Vang’s status and deported him. O’Reilly treats that federal action as the only rational response.

He turns next on the Minneapolis Star Tribune. A column praised Walz and offered classic whataboutism: the abuse was terrible, but so were the January 6 Capitol protests, and those participants received presidential pardons. O’Reilly rejects the comparison without hedging. There is no moral equivalence between the repeated sexual abuse of a ten-year-old and the Capitol riot. None. The paper, in his view, disgraced itself by treating the two as comparable.

The second example is large-scale fraud tied to pandemic-era programs and heavily involving the Somali community. O’Reilly cites roughly 110 people arrested and 66 convicted in a scheme he puts near nine billion dollars. The best-documented piece is the Feeding Our Future case, which involved hundreds of millions in fabricated meal claims. Broader estimates of Minnesota program fraud have run higher. He notes that a journalist helped expose much of it, while state officials have sometimes redirected blame toward federal immigration enforcement.

Minnesota, he concludes, now belongs in the same category as California, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Oregon, and Washington—states where progressive governance has lost basic perspective on justice and accountability. The majority of voters there chose this path. That is the hard fact he wants his audience to sit with.

The underlying question is not partisan. It is philosophical and practical. What happens when a governing class prioritizes group sensitivities, forgiveness narratives, and ideological consistency over the protection of the most vulnerable and the clear enforcement of serious crimes? When moral equivalence is stretched until child rape and political disorder are placed on the same scale, ordinary people lose trust. Governance that cannot draw clear lines eventually loses the capacity to govern at all.

Brief synopsis of the rest of the episode

After the Memo, O’Reilly turns to the ongoing conflict between Trump and the corporate broadcast networks. He discusses a recent national-security leak involving a Qatar-gifted plane intended as a new Air Force One that Secret Service rejected on security grounds. The New York Times reported the details. Trump wants the leaker identified; the Justice Department has issued subpoenas. The FCC has also raised the possibility of reviewing ABC and NBC licenses for declining to air a Trump speech, citing the long-standing “public interest” standard that governs the broadcast spectrum.

Thomas Berry, director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, joins to discuss the First Amendment limits on that power. He argues that the government cannot play favorites based on viewpoint, that national-security claims require actual factual scrutiny, and that the old scarcity rationale for heavy broadcast regulation is obsolete in an era of abundant media. Free speech, he says, is winning over the long term through more sources rather than through forcing networks to carry particular content.

O’Reilly closes with a personal observation about Trump’s age and workload, advising the president to take a real break while still managing the Iran situation by phone. The advice is framed as coming from someone who has known him for decades and who claims to respect the office itself.

Why Democrat Women Are Angry — Naomi Wolf on Pod Force One

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:22:07 -0500

Dr. Naomi Wolf rose in the early 1990s as a third-wave feminist voice with The Beauty Myth, the bestseller that argued commercial beauty standards worked as a quiet counterattack on women’s gains. Yale-educated, a Rhodes Scholar, and later an Oxford doctorate, she advised Bill Clinton’s re-election team and Al Gore’s campaign on how to reach female voters. For a time she was the progressive establishment’s preferred translator of women’s concerns.

That version of Wolf is largely gone. On Miranda Devine’s Pod Force One, the New York Post’s political interview podcast, she sat down for a long conversation under the blunt title “Why Democrat Women Are So Angry.”

Watch Naomi Wolf on Pod Force One here: [VIDEO]

Wolf walks through her own trajectory. She describes the Democratic Party’s long cultural campaign against traditional masculinity—“toxic masculinity,” the male gaze treated as inherently predatory, ordinary protective male instincts framed as dangerous. In her account this did not liberate women. It left many of them alienated from men, from family life, and from the ordinary sources of female satisfaction that biology still rewards: pair bonding, physical touch, the hormonal benefits of stable relationships and motherhood.

COVID completed the break. The same institutions that once celebrated bodily autonomy suddenly demanded compliance, and the party she had served treated dissent as moral failure. Wolf frames the resulting anger as the predictable outcome of a worldview that suppresses sex differences while demanding women perform endless ideological vigilance.

Does she answer the title question? Yes—directly. The anger, in her telling, is not primarily about court rulings or the usual policy checklist. It is the residual rage of women told that men were the problem, that family was optional or oppressive, and that fulfillment would come from political identity. When those substitutes failed to deliver connection or satisfaction, the frustration had somewhere to go: political rage, purity spirals, and performative conflict.

Wolf argues the left’s gender ideology has produced a cohort of women who are relationally and hormonally under-nourished, then trained to interpret that emptiness as systemic injustice rather than a mismatch between ideology and human nature. The party’s internal civil war only deepens the sense that nothing works and someone must be punished.

Whether the diagnosis lands depends on how much weight you give biology and observed sex differences. Wolf is making a classical case: suppress durable patterns of human behavior long enough and you do not get utopia. You get irritability, alienation, and movements that mistake personal unhappiness for structural oppression.

Ben Shapiro on Tate, Piker, and the Race to the Fringes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 23:30:00 -0500

Ben Shapiro’s newest episode, Tate & Piker: The Race To The Retard Fringes, is a clean diagnosis of where the loudest edges of American politics are heading. On the left, he tracks the growing comfort with figures like Hasan Piker—who openly celebrates Mao, keeps a Chinese flag in his studio, and treats the body count of communist experiments as a detail rather than a verdict—and the broader embrace of Third Worldism by rising Democratic Socialists. On the right, he notes the continued soft defense of Andrew and Tristan Tate despite the serious trafficking allegations against them. The episode is not a both-sides equivalence. It is a warning that both fringes are abandoning the same core standards.

Watch Shapiro's latest episode here [VIDEO]

Both camps share a deeper posture. They treat the American experiment—individual rights, limited government, the superiority of open societies over closed ones—as either a scam or an inconvenience. The left does it through revolutionary nostalgia and imported grievance. Parts of the right do it through aesthetic toughness that excuses predation. Neither is interested in the hard, unglamorous work of defending institutions that actually produce prosperity and liberty.

What Shapiro means by Third Worldism

Shapiro defines Third Worldism as wokeness applied to the entire globe. Domestic wokeness claimed that every inequality of outcome inside America was proof the system itself was rigged. Third Worldism makes the identical claim internationally: every failure in the Global South is the direct result of Western exploitation. The West’s success and the rest of the world’s struggles are not the product of different institutions, cultures, governance, or choices. They are the permanent moral debt the West owes for colonialism and “empire.”

Once that frame is accepted, the politics become predictable. Borders and immigration enforcement turn into tools of oppression. Support for Israel becomes settler-colonialism. Criticism of regimes in Havana, Beijing, or Tehran is dismissed as Western propaganda. The solution is not better governance in failing countries. It is more power, more moral authority, and more demographic weight transferred from the West to those who claim to speak for the “exploited.”

You hear it in the language of certain DSA-aligned candidates who argue America needs more officeholders drawn from the Global South so the country can finally “reckon” with its exploitative history. You see it in the alliances: influencers who defend Mao while condemning American power, who treat anti-Western “resistance” movements as inherently righteous regardless of their actual records. The recent State Department report on Cuban influence operations fits the pattern. For decades Havana has cultivated exactly this worldview inside U.S. activist networks, funding groups and recruiting people who already believe the West is the permanent villain.

Why the frame matters

Third Worldism is not mainly an economic theory. It is a theory of moral agency. It denies that people and nations outside the West are full authors of their own outcomes. Everything bad is downstream of someone else’s power. That is why it pairs so easily with revolutionary talk: if the problem is external and permanent, internal reform is pointless. Only rupture will do.

The older mid-century version of Third Worldism at least claimed to seek independence and development on its own terms. The contemporary Western version is different. It is largely a product of Western self-loathing. It offers activists a way to feel radical without having to build functioning institutions, and it gives political entrepreneurs a grievance that never has to be resolved.

Shapiro’s larger point is that this ideology is no longer confined to campus seminars or obscure activist circles. Parts of the Democratic Party’s rising class have absorbed it. The older language of equal opportunity is being displaced by a language of civilizational indictment. When that shift hardens, the conversation stops being about how free societies can work better for more people. It becomes a contest over who gets to dismantle them.

That is the race he is describing.

The DSA’s Plan to End Separation of Powers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:41:24 -0500

I hear a lot about the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. One thing that keeps coming up from the right is that they want to abolish the U.S. Senate and replace the independent presidency and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary that are subordinate to Congress. A lot of people on the right look at that and call it communism.

Some on the right call this communism because it would concentrate legislative, executive, and judicial power in a single body. Once the legislature chooses and controls both the people who enforce the laws and the people who interpret them, the remaining restraints are political rather than structural. That institutional design—combined with the DSA’s broader goal of public ownership of major industries—looks, to critics, less like a reformed republic and more like the concentrated authority seen in socialist systems that discarded independent checks in the name of the people’s will.

I’ve struggled with the reasoning behind it. I asked my AI assistant to walk me through their logic, and one line stuck with me:

What the DSA is proposing is a pure majoritarian legislature that selects and controls the people who enforce and interpret the laws. Once you accept that structure, the remaining ‘checks’ become internal party discipline or temporary public opinion rather than institutional barriers. That’s why critics reach for the communism label: not because every DSA member is quoting Lenin, but because the institutional architecture they want looks a lot more like a people’s assembly with an administrative arm than a system of divided government.

The more I sit with that, the clearer it becomes. This isn’t just about reforming the Senate or making the system more “democratic.” It’s designed to eliminate the whole idea of separation of powers and checks and balances in favor of what they call true majority rule.

That phrase is doing a lot of work. For the DSA, “true majority rule” means a single legislature elected by proportional representation that can pass laws, choose the people who enforce them, and choose the people who interpret them—all without an independent executive or court able to block the popular will. In their view, the Senate (which gives equal power to small states), the Electoral College, and an independent Supreme Court are not safeguards. They are deliberate obstacles that let a minority of the population, or the “ruling class,” override what a numerical majority wants. Remove those obstacles and the working class can finally govern without institutional interference.

The American system was built on a different idea: that pure majority rule, left unchecked, can become its own form of tyranny. That’s why the Founders created a republic with multiple filters—representation by states as well as by population, an independent executive, and a judiciary that answers to the Constitution rather than the latest legislative majority. They believed ambition should counteract ambition, and that no single body should hold all three kinds of power.

So the DSA proposal is not a small adjustment. It is a conscious choice to trade those structural brakes for a more direct form of majority control. Whether that produces better government or simply concentrates power in whoever controls the legislature at any given moment is the real debate.

That’s interesting when you consider how many on the left feel about Trump. Right now we have mechanisms that can at least slow a president down, even if they can’t always stop him outright. Those mechanisms include two houses of Congress and a Supreme Court. They’re especially potent when the opposition controls one or both chambers of Congress. If Democrats somehow take control of Congress in this year’s midterms, those same institutional brakes would be available to restrain a president they dislike. The DSA proposal would remove that architecture entirely in the name of true majority rule.

Sources

The Democratic Socialists of America’s current program, Workers Deserve More, explicitly calls for abolishing the Senate and replacing the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary subordinate to Congress: program.dsausa.org.
A 2014 article published on the DSA’s own site makes the case for abolishing the Senate as an undemocratic institution: “Want Democracy in the United States? Abolish the Senate!” (Democratic Socialists of America).
City Journal reported on the platform’s adoption and quoted DSA leaders discussing the abolition of the Senate and subordination of the other branches: “The Democratic Socialists of America Just Adopted a Radical New Platform” by Stu Smith.
DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique stated on C-SPAN that abolishing the Senate is part of the organization’s platform and that it historically served “very wealthy people”: The Post Millennial report.
National Review noted the DSA’s official position against the Senate and the constitutional barriers to abolishing it: “The DSA vs. the Senate”.
Fox News covered the platform’s call to eliminate the Senate and make the executive and judiciary subordinate to Congress: “Socialists launch radical platform to abolish the US Senate”.

The Progressive Pair That Remade Washington

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:33:38 -0500

In his sharp video breakdown, Jake the Lawyer challenges a piece of conventional wisdom: the 17th Amendment, which moved the election of U.S. Senators from state legislatures to direct popular vote, wasn’t just a win for democracy. It quietly dismantled a key pillar of the Founders’ federalist system and helped pave the way for today’s expansive national government.

What makes the story particularly revealing is the timing. Just months before the 17th Amendment’s ratification in 1913, the 16th Amendment took effect, giving Congress broad power to levy a federal income tax. Two “progressive reforms” in the same year — one expanding revenue, the other reshaping representation — worked together to shift power dramatically upward from the states to Washington.

The Founders’ Balance: States as Sovereign Partners

The original constitutional design was deliberate. The House of Representatives gave the people direct, frequent voice — population-based, shorter terms, responsive to public opinion. The Senate represented the states themselves. State legislatures chose senators, who served as ambassadors protecting state interests and sovereignty within the national compact. This created built-in tension: senators had real incentives to limit federal overreach because their political survival depended on keeping their state governments satisfied.

Direct federal income taxes were deliberately constrained. The Founders feared an elastic revenue source that could fuel unchecked central power, so they required apportionment among the states for direct taxes. Revenue came mostly from tariffs and excises, keeping the national government leaner and more dependent on cooperation with the states.

Progressive Reforms Meet Structural Change

By the early 20th century, Progressives highlighted genuine problems: corporate influence in some statehouses, wealth gaps, and economic volatility. The 16th Amendment promised fairer revenue by taxing incomes, especially from the wealthy, reducing reliance on tariffs that burdened consumers. The 17th Amendment promised cleaner politics by letting “the people” choose senators directly instead of letting special interests dominate state legislatures.

On paper, both sounded like clear improvements. In practice, their interaction accelerated centralization:

Revenue engine unlocked: The income tax provided a scalable, growing funding source. What began modestly expanded dramatically in later decades, supporting ever-larger federal programs and bureaucracies.
Representation nationalized: Senators no longer answered first to state legislatures protective of their sovereignty. They answered to statewide voters — and the national parties, media, and donors who influence those voters. This made it easier to champion expansive federal initiatives, attach conditions to money sent back to states, and campaign against reluctant state governments when convenient.

The result was a self-reinforcing loop. More federal money funded more programs. More nationally oriented senators had stronger incentives to grow the federal role rather than defend strict limits on it. States slowly shifted from co-equal partners to implementers of D.C. policy.

A Philosophical Tension: Majoritarianism vs. Federalism

This episode captures a deeper debate in political thought. The Founders designed a republic of dual sovereignty — states as laboratories of democracy and vital checks against concentrated power. They drew from history and a sober view of human nature: power tends to aggregate, factions capture institutions, and pure national democracy risks majority tyranny or elite manipulation.

Progressives, shaped by industrialization and faith in expert administration, saw the old federalist structure as outdated. They prioritized national solutions and direct democracy over “parochial” state concerns. The 1913 amendments reflected that worldview — with lasting consequences for how power flows in America today.

We feel those effects in endless federal mandates, conditional spending that pressures states, senators more focused on national headlines than local sovereignty, and a massive administrative state sustained by that income tax foundation.

Why This History Matters Now

Neither amendment was enacted in bad faith, and each addressed real issues of its time. But good intentions don’t erase structural trade-offs. When you combine elastic federal revenue with representation untethered from state governments, you get a national government far more capable — and inclined — to expand its reach.

Watch Jake the Lawyer’s video here: [VIDEO]

Understanding 1913 as a pivotal package helps explain why restoring genuine federal balance feels so difficult today. It’s a reminder that constitutional mechanics matter. Small-sounding changes in incentives and power structures can reshape a republic for generations.

As we navigate modern debates over government size, state autonomy, and accountability, revisiting these amendments encourages clearer thinking: not every reform labeled “progress” strengthens liberty or self-government in the long run. Sometimes the most important safeguards are the ones we quietly set aside.

Why Democrats Fear the Socialist Wave in Wisconsin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:30:00 -0500

The Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor isn't just messy—it's a national bellwether. As Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez's campaign imploded in a finance scandal and moderates scramble, democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong is riding a wave of genuine enthusiasm. This isn't isolated. Across the country in 2026, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed candidates are scoring wins and forcing the party to confront where its real grassroots energy lives.

Source: muberr.com

Momentum Building: Not Just New York Anymore

Hong has surged to the top of limited public polling and strong second-place finishes in party straw polls. Backed by Milwaukee and Madison DSA chapters, she's channeling frustration over affordability, corporate power, inequality, and declining rural communities. Her platform—universal childcare, stronger labor rights, taxing the wealthy, a $20 minimum wage—resonates with volunteers knocking doors and small-dollar donors.

This fits a broader 2026 pattern. DSA-aligned candidates notched big victories in New York City primaries (including upsets of incumbents), advanced in Los Angeles, won the D.C. mayoral race, and are pushing in places like Colorado and Michigan. Hong herself celebrated recent New York wins as "a great day to be a democratic socialist." The energy is undeniable: young organizers, working-class voters feeling squeezed, and progressives tired of incrementalism.

In Wisconsin—a former labor stronghold turned battleground after Scott Walker's anti-union reforms—this isn't abstract. Hong argues bold populism can rebuild majorities across urban-rural divides. Her campaign taps into real pain: stagnant wages, housing costs, and a sense that the Democratic establishment has cozied up to billionaires and data centers while everyday people struggle.

Why Regular Democrats Are Sounding the Alarm

Establishment Democrats aren't celebrating. They're in "freakout mode." Anonymous lawmakers and strategists call Hong's rise "scary." Their concerns boil down to electability in a purple state where margins are razor-thin:

Past Positions Haunt Them: Hong has history with "abolish police/prisons" rhetoric and refusing the Pledge of Allegiance—though she's moderated some. Republicans like Tom Tiffany are salivating, running ads framing her as "crazy" versus "common sense." With Tiffany sitting on millions and Trump’s endorsement, they see a clear contrast.
Swing Voters Matter: Wisconsin isn't deep-blue New York or D.C. Rural and suburban voters (the "fours" needed to win) may tune out once they hear "socialist." One voter at a Northwoods forum worried: "This is not Colorado." Moderates fear repeating Mandela Barnes' 2022 struggles against relentless attacks on progressive stances.
Broader Party Risk: A Hong nomination could energize the base but alienate moderates and independents needed for unified government control. Democrats haven't held the trifecta here in over a decade. Losing the governorship would be a disaster in a favorable national environment. Insiders worry the left's surge fractures the coalition precisely when pragmatism is required.

Critics within the party see DSA success as real in safe blue enclaves but risky where persuasion of the median voter is everything. It's the classic tension: ideological fire versus broad appeal.

The Philosophical Undercurrent

This fight reveals something deeper about democracy. Democratic socialism's appeal stems from legitimate grievances—concentrated wealth, eroded bargaining power, and systems that feel rigged. The "energy" comes from authenticity and moral clarity that inspires volunteers. Yet, in a republic of diverse interests and close elections, governing requires coalition-building, compromise, and results that endure beyond activist circles.

Pure passion without broad persuasion risks backlash. Regular Democrats aren't heartless gatekeepers; many genuinely believe moderation wins power to deliver tangible help (schools, roads, healthcare access). The question isn't whether the left has ideas—it's whether those ideas can translate into sustainable majorities in battlegrounds like Wisconsin.

As primaries wrap up, watch closely. A Hong victory would signal the socialist wave cresting into the mainstream. A moderate consolidation might show the establishment's survival instincts holding. Either way, it forces Democrats to decide: chase the energy or prioritize the math?

Wisconsin voters will answer soon. The rest of the country is paying attention.

Read the full story: ‘It’s scary’: Scandal sends Wisconsin Dems into freakout mode over governor’s race

h/t Newsalert

What's your take—does the left's momentum represent the future of the party, or a high-risk gamble in swing states? Let's discuss.