polecat news and views

Thursday, August 13, 2026

*Gif screenshot from Gone with the Wind*

You won't be surprised to know that there are "journalists" doing the thing where they make everything about themselves again.

Yesterday Brett wrote about journalists and other Democrats who are clutching pearls over what happened recently in Turkey:

The big news on X today isn't that it's Election Day in several key states, but that President Donald Trump pulled the old switcheroo on a flight from Turkey, boarding Air Force One in full view of cameras, slipping out the far side into a catering truck, and transferring to another military transport. This was all done due to a credible assassination threat from Iran, and as our own Sam J. reported earlier, CNN's Jake Tapper took great offense that White House staffers and reporters were left on Trump's death jet.

The story: Iran had a serious plot to kill the president while he was overseas.

Media headlines: OMG Secret Service prioritized protecting the president and not every member of the press who was tagging along.

Reporters seem shocked to learn that the Secret Service's job is to protect the president and not all the press that travels with him.

Young People Got Shafted and Need to Suck It Up

Young People Got Shafted and Need to Suck It Up

by Kurt Schlichter

I identify as Gen X even though I was technically born in the last week of the Baby Boom, and my generational cohort is taking a lot of grief from a lot of young people — by whom I mean anybody not of driving age when 9/11 happened. The rap is this: the older folks rigged the game and, to the extent they have gotten out of the way (Boomers being accused of selfishly clinging to power, prestige, and position long after their sell-by date), we have left subsequent generations an economic Schiff sandwich. Some of this critique is justified — those kooky kids today are right that they got served up an unprecedented set of obstacles and challenges to success. But us crusties have a point too: if you’re regularly dropping your cash on the proverbial $20 burrito, you’re doing money management wrong.

Basically, things fiscally suck for young people, but things have always fiscally sucked for young people, and the only way through it is through it.

When we hear younger folk complain how everything sucks, our usual move is to explain how things sucked for us. And things did suck for us. I was making $3.10 an hour mopping out the stalls at the Foster City Carl’s Jr. in 1981. I moved up in the world across the street to McDonald’s, where I slung Big Macs for $3.35 an hour. I got fired from Denny’s along the way for gross incompetence. And in 1988, I was pulling in $1,286.10 a month as a second lieutenant. I did freelance writing in the ’90s and wrote trivia questions and jokes for bar trivia games. I built a law firm after leaving a bigger law firm — I brought in Circuit City as a client as a second-year lawyer and got offered the same bonus of $500 as the associate they caught sleeping under his desk; my counteroffer was that I keep everything. What that meant was long hours, risk, and that everyone else got paid before I did. If we didn’t make money one month, I didn’t make money. And I was a reservist during that time, and my active duty did not count (one weekend a month and two weeks a year, my rear end — I ended up deploying for 16 months after 9/11, plus mobilizations for riots, fires, earthquakes, plagues of frogs, and O.J.). Eventually I was doing multiple gigs at once — lawyering, soldiering, stand-up comedy, and then writing, first for Andrew Breitbart, then here at Townhall, and also pumping out books (like my latest novel, “American Warlord,” out for presale now).

My purpose here is not to demonstrate the awesomeness that is Kurt; it’s to show that I worked a lot. I missed important stuff. I did not take vacations. I drove a used Volvo. It was 2005 before I paid off my student loans. I, and once I got married, we sacrificed a lot of the fun we saw friends having for our long-term goals. I did not buy $20 burritos; I still don’t. But one day, you get to a place where a $1,500 surprise transmission fix is not going to send you into a tailspin. So when I presume to offer my insights into getting your life into fiscal order, I did it. But none of this means young people today have it easy. It means no one had it easy. No one gave us anything, and no one is going to give young people everything. But none of that means that their complaints do not have some basic legitimacy. Take student loans — please. I used the GI Bill to pay some of my school, but I still walked out with about $70,000. It was doable; it never occurred to me that I should palm off the education that gave me the ability to practice law on the taxpayers. But the truth is that gullible young people got told that they should run up $200K to get a degree in Trans-curious Ecuadorian Interpretive Dance. And then they found that a barista’s salary — because they have no other saleable skills — isn’t going to service that debt. Imagine a six-figure millstone hung around your neck when you are just starting out with no upside that allows you to earn it off. Sure, they signed on the line that was dotted, but there is such a thing as joint and several liability; the system our generation put in place is liable as well.

And there are other problems. Inflation from the Biden era, along with the much smaller but still significant consequences of tariffs and Iran (both of which have a point, but require some sacrifice), means the dollars the kids make don’t stretch. We could go out in our 20s and get $2 beers; a couple of beers today is now over $20, and that’s unsustainable. No wonder the birthrate is dropping; the kids can’t go out and meet mates without taking out a mortgage. Moreover, there’s unfair competition, and our generation allowed it. We told the kids to go learn to code, to do the STEM thing, and then we allowed zillions of foreigners in on H-1B visas (or with no visa at all) into the country to provide a cheap serf class for the corporations. We priced the young people out of the market — I wasn’t competing with thousands of dudes from Goatbangistan when I was coming up. And a guy like me could get a job. DEI fascism has disenfranchised the male-identifying people o’ pallor; it was Jim Crow, except for honkies. And yes, rent and houses are expensive, but they were for us, too.

All this adds up to real problems for young people. There are some who think they should be living like their parents the day after they toss their mortarboard at their graduation from the University of College. Some believe that they can buy a daily $8.50 half-decaf half-espresso mocha macchiato every morning, and that’s just not so. When you’re young, you have no money. We didn’t; they won’t either, and to the extent they are bitching about that, well, talk to the hand. But our generation did do some damage, and we need to fix it. How? Here’s a non-exclusive list:

End the student loan scam. Government-guaranteed student loans let colleges raise their prices because they don’t care — they always get their money. They need skin in the game to incentivize them to stop scamming credulous kids.
Deport the illegal aliens and free up housing and jobs.
No more H-1B visas. Why are we importing foreigners when our own young people are sending out a thousand resumes and getting maybe one interview?
Totally eradicate DEI and demand pure merit as the only criterion. The deliberate discrimination against the non-diverse must end. The best should prevail, be it a cisgender male who makes Mitt Romney look ethnic or a lesbian Hindu of color with a limp.

But while we can fix some structural problems, here’s the hard truth. It’s always tough starting out. It always will be. You get nothing for free; if you want the Instagram fantasy life, you have to work for it. We get that there are obstacles. We get that there are challenges. We understand that there are things our generation did that need to be undone. But at the end of the day, what is going to make the difference is hard work and sacrifice. We need to get out of its way, but there’s no scenario where the younger generation gets anything handed to it. And that means maybe boiling up some ramen during your 20s instead of DoorDashing those $20 burritos.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2026/08/10/young-people-got-shafted-and-need-to-suck-it-up-n2680923?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&utm_content=ncl-eNUp78f6FX&utm_term=&_nlid=eNUp78f6FX&_nhids=nczGeHMkh4e8ls

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Michigan Socialist Slams Trump’s 'Rocky' Marriage to Melania After Viral Photo

Michigan Socialist Slams Trump’s 'Rocky' Marriage to Melania After Viral Photo

By Kyle Becker

President Trump stirred the pot this weekend simply by posting a few photos and a catchphrase.

The first photo was one of himself with First Lady Melania Trump. Next to it was the photo of Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed with his wife, Sarah Jukaku.

His caption? “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”

Trump didn't explain what he meant, which is probably for the best.

But the photograph of El-Sayed and his wife immediately drew attention because Jukaku, a psychiatrist and fellow physician, is pictured wearing a hijab.

El-Sayed, who was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents and would become the first Muslim U.S. senator if elected, is running as an unapologetic socialist.

Was Trump commenting on religion? Immigration? Assimilation? Culture? Politics? The hijab? All of the above? He didn't say.

El-Sayed nevertheless decided to answer the provocation during an appearance Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union,” and instead of leaving Melania out of it, he went straight after the Trumps' marriage.

“Actually, Sarah and I like each other,” El-Sayed told Jake Tapper. “I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but, from what I have heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road.”

Well, obvious lies aside, that’s a pretty good glimpse at what Michiganders will get if they elect this clown. Alinsky tactics instead of policy solutions. Trump obviously gave El-Sayed the opening with the photo post, and he responds by taking a shot at his marriage.

America is heading into uncharted waters where there is no such thing as “class.”

But more importantly, El-Sayed agreed, somewhat sarcastically, that the two couples represent competing visions of America.

“Yeah, he’s right — you’ve got two different visions of America — one in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you,” he said.

His alternative was himself and his wife: “two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family.”

Sure, because open borders, abolishing the police, and letting violent criminals onto the street are “keeping America safe.” He might want to read the not-so-fine-print on his DSA platform guide.

The swipe at Melania is interesting because we've been watching this same tired routine for years. The lefty press has been fascinated with the unfounded notion that Donald and Melania Trump secretly despise one another.

Breathless stories have gone viral in lefty media due to speculation about the Trumps’ facial expressions, hand gestures, whether she was sufficiently affectionate — yada yada yada. Less work was spent analyzing the Zapruder film.

There was even the bizarre recurring “Fake Melania” conspiracy theory claiming Trump occasionally used a body double in place of his wife.

Then there was the much more serious Epstein episode. Melania Trump threatened legal action in 2025 after reports repeated allegations concerning how she met Donald Trump and attempted to connect her personal history to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Daily Beast ultimately retracted an article based on claims made by Michael Wolff and apologized after receiving a legal challenge from Melania's attorneys.

Hunter Biden also repeated allegations about Epstein supposedly introducing the Trumps, prompting Melania's attorney to demand that he retract the statements and apologize while threatening litigation seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

So El-Sayed isn't exactly wandering into unexplored territory here. Going after the Trump marriage has practically become its own political-media genre.

But there may be something more interesting happening underneath all the cheap shots.

Trump chose the words “two very different Americas,” not “two very different marriages.”

And whatever he personally intended, the image lands in the middle of a much larger argument about the direction of the country.

For years, the United States experienced enormous immigration levels while politicians and corporations increasingly presented America less as a historically rooted nation and more as an economic and geographic space into which practically anybody could arrive.

Trump is posting a not-so-subtle rejection of that idea. His administration has dramatically reduced illegal border crossings, increased deportations, and put assimilation, citizenship, and American national identity back at the center of immigration policy.

The Democrat Party's ascendant socialist wing is moving in the exact opposite direction. And El-Sayed is one of the new poster children for this DSA-driven agenda. His politics are taken straight from the socialist playbook on healthcare, taxes, immigration, and the idea that America's institutions need to be completely overhauled.

So, their “machismo politics” are a superficial skirmish masking a serious political fight. It’s really a crass version of Sun Tzu’s "Art of War." This is the brilliant way Trump has steered political debates onto his own preferred terrain.

Trump posts a picture. El-Sayed insults Trump's marriage. Everybody gets mad.

While everybody is arguing about whether Trump and Melanie actually have a good marriage, Americans are thinking: Wait, what kind of America do I really want to live in?

https://redstate.com/kyle-becker/2026/08/10/michigan-socialist-slams-trumps-rocky-marriage-to-melania-after-photo-comparison-n2205403?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Fire Margaret Brennan. Now.

Fire Margaret Brennan. Now.

David Strom

Look, I admit up front that I think Margaret Brennan is a lefty hack. I would have loved to see her fired for any number of reasons, so if you want to say I am biased, you have a point.

But as much as that is true, even if I thought she was anything but a ridiculous, midwit hack, after watching her browbeat one of the best public servants America has had in a long time in order to make a personal and rather stupid point on a Sunday News program, I would say that she deserves to be fired with prejudice.

Brennan is trying to blame a tragic shooting of a brave police officer on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. because he spreads "vaccine disinformation," which is quadruply ridiculous, but even worse, she tries to shut down Jay Bhattacharya to prevent him from making a larger and much more publicly significant point that goes to her thesis, and she won't let him.

She isn't interviewing Bhattacharya; she is using him as a foil to make a political point that is her own. She might as well have just looked into the camera and said "I think this," as if she were doing The Daily Show.

There are so many things wrong with that; it is a privilege to have somebody as brilliant as Bhattacharya on the show, and it is her job to maximize the value to the viewers and, frankly, not to waste his time. He could be doing any number of more productive things, and the only excuse to bring him onto the show is to get some value from him that is unique to him.

That doesn't mean she can't ask pointed political questions; he is, after all, a government official in a sensitive job that impacts everybody, and he is, like it or not, a political figure now. The original question itself was perfectly legitimate, if rather stupid, but her behavior and unwillingness to let him answer were frankly unforgivable. And putting it in the context of her preening, quite unjustified, that she had done serious investigative work during COVID is laughable.

She and the rest of Pravda were key spreaders of damaging "misinformation" during COVID, and Bhattacharya was right about almost everything. She parroted Fauci and company, and now wants credit for being nothing but wrong. She's actually PROUD of her role in spreading lies. Because of course she is.

But obviously she's not simply a stenographer for the government, given her behavior here. She's a stenographer for the Democrats and the establishment that got everything wrong. She tries to blame Donald Trump for getting this shooter riled up about vaccine "disinformation" in a few months after he returned to office?

Trump wasn't even talking about the vaccine during that time. He was pretty busy with other things, and, as you may recall, he actually remains proud of his role in rolling out the vaccine for some reason. Not that Margaret would admit it, but Trump agrees more with her than RFK, Jr. on the issue.

If Margaret Brennan wants to have a "Daily Show" type program, she should resign from her role and try to get a job doing one. She is a talentless hack whose main qualifications seem to be decent fluency in English and an ability to hobnob with liberal establishment figures at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Gridiron Club. She is not, shall we say, a deep thinker.

She's no Tim Russert, shall we say. May he rest in peace.

No doubt, if Bari Weiss fired her, there would be a firestorm, and I can understand that there is only so much drama one can create and still remain an effective boss. But Face the Nation is a key part of the CBS News brand, and Brennan is an embarrassment.

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/08/10/fire-margaret-brennan-now-n3817821?utm_source=twdailyamvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Stop Blaming the Climate for Wildfires We Can Prevent

Stop Blaming the Climate for Wildfires We Can Prevent

by Frank Lasee

As wildfires ravage southwestern France this July, forcing more than 220,000 people from their homes in the Gironde region near Bordeaux and burning some 42,000 hectares (162 sq. miles) of forest, the familiar refrain returns: climate change is to blame. France is now enduring its worst fire season on record.

Extreme heat and drought clearly worsen conditions. But blaming climate alone hides more immediate, controllable causes: human ignition, fuel buildup, and forest management choices that turn landscapes into tinderboxes.

French authorities have detained well over 160 people since early July for suspected arson or reckless fire-starting. Officials say nine in 10 fires have human origins, whether deliberate or careless, from discarded cigarettes to illegal machinery and fireworks.

The most serious blaze alone has destroyed roughly 240 homes and pushed to within about nine miles of Bordeaux.

In Spain, parallel blazes near Madrid have produced arrests linked to farm equipment and other human activity. Matches and carelessness light most fires. Weather merely fans them.

The forests themselves amplify the danger. Much of the Gironde and the neighboring Landes de Gascogne is managed maritime pine plantation, Europe's largest artificial forest of even-aged, resin-rich Pinus pinaster, established for timber and still maintained for lumber.

These monocultures create continuous fuel beds of needles and undergrowth with few natural firebreaks. Broadleaf species that hold more moisture and would slow a fire are often cut back or suppressed.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In North America, herbicides including glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, are routinely sprayed after harvest or fire to kill competing hardwoods so commercial pines, spruces, and Douglas firs can dominate.

Limited, targeted use of the same chemicals has occurred in the Landes for site preparation and young-stand weed control. The result is a landscape optimized for softwood volume, not resilience. Fuel buildup compounds the problem. Decades of fire suppression without enough prescribed burns, thinning, or mechanical removal leave dense underbrush ready to explode once ignited.

States that actively manage their forests tell a different story. Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Idaho hold vast forests yet rarely see California-scale megafires. Prescribed fire, selective harvesting, and vegetation control keep fuel loads low and fires small.

California and parts of the West that favored passive "let nature take its course" policies, alongside sprawling wildland-urban interfaces, have seen the opposite. Even California's own universities now urge a return to the controlled burning Native Americans practiced for centuries, a tacit admission that the hands-off approach failed. Management, not temperature alone, shapes the outcome.

Global data challenges the claim that the planet is simply burning more. NASA satellite records show the total land area burned each year has fallen about 25 percent since the late 1990s, especially in grasslands and savannas as farming and settlement replaced open burning.

This year fits that pattern. Globally, 2026 is running as a below-average wildfire year, with total area burned near record lows for the date, even as Europe endures a severe season.

Forest fires have grown more intense in some regions, including the Mediterranean and the western U.S. But the worldwide trend in burned area is down, not up. Climate shapes fire weather; human land use and ignition largely determine whether and how far fires spread.

None of this denies that hotter, drier summers raise risk. Heatwaves dry out vegetation, make it more combustible, and make firefighting harder and more dangerous. In the U.S., we have had more heatwaves and wildfires in the past than we do now; look at the very hot and dry 1930s or the 1870s, when we had the deadliest fire ever, the Great Peshtigo Fire.

Treating every blaze as proof of an unmanageable climate crisis distracts from practical remedies: aggressive prosecution of arson, restoring diverse forest structures instead of pure softwood monocultures, expanded prescribed burning, mechanical fuel reduction, and clearing defensible space around the homes crowding into fire-prone terrain.

The Landes pine plantations and North American conifer-release programs show how timber-focused management can raise fire hazard. Places that treat forests as working landscapes, not untouchable wilderness, demonstrate that better stewardship reduces catastrophe.

The fires in Gironde are tragic and destructive. They are also largely the product of human choices: what we plant, what we suppress, what we let accumulate, and who lights the first spark.

Climate sets the stage. Management and responsibility write the script. Governments should take responsibility, do their job, and stop scapegoating climate change to avoid responsibility.

https://townhall.com/columnists/franke-lasee/2026/08/08/stop-blaming-the-climate-for-wildfires-we-can-prevent-n2680765