polecat news and views

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

I think it's safe to say that our European allies have shown themselves to be pretty feckless when it comes to responding to the threats from the Iranian regime.

After 47 years of the regime promoting terror and oppressing their own people, they moved to cut off free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz after being hit by the U.S. and Israel. Now that's not really an attack on us because we don't ship much through the area, although it does affect things like oil prices for us. But they're impeding ships from all over the world, attacking them and attacking their Gulf neighbors.

What has been the response of the world? Precious little action. The U.N. voted down a resolution from Bahrain to deal with it, even on a purely defensive basis. Our European allies spent a lot of time talking about it and pontificating. They spent more time speaking against us than they did against the regime.

This week, the European allies took some more performative action. As we reported, France sent their only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, with a strike group to the region.

Now, the British have sent a ship, the HMS Dragon, a destroyer, to the region.

HMS Dragon, a type 45 destroyer, will "pre-position" in the region ahead of its "potential role" in what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) described as a "strictly defensive and independent" mission.
Sir Keir Starmer, who together with French president Emmanuel Macron is championing the mission, has said the shipping mission would only take place once fighting in the region ends.

But since they don't intend to use those assets until the fighting is over, apart from being performative to look like they're doing something, what is the point? I suppose it's a minimal signal to Iran that their ambitions to take over control of the state, post the military action, could face some issues.

This is despite a British airbase being hit by a drone in Cyprus in March.

Back in the 1980s, during the Tanker Wars, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom actually participated in escorts and minesweeping to safeguard transit against Iran. That's what they should be doing now. But now they don't seem to care about doing enough, even to fully defend their own interests being free through the Strait.

A strong world response at the outset would have nipped this new terrorism in the bud. But instead, the U.N couldn't even get its act together on a resolution put forth by Bahrain, in part, as we explained, because France was acting like a weak-kneed surrender monkey. That was voted down in April.

But if all that wasn't feckless enough, you wouldn't believe what happened on Sunday.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said earlier that any French or British naval deployment in or around the strait would face a “decisive and immediate response” from the Iranian armed forces.

So what was French President Emmanuel Macron's response to that Iranian threat? This is next-level, even for long-term surrender monkeys.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday ruled out any unilateral French military deployment in the Strait of Hormuz without consultation with Iran, while reaffirming Paris’ readiness to support efforts aimed at restoring maritime traffic in the strategic waterway.
“A French deployment was never considered,” Macron told a press conference in Nairobi alongside Kenyan President William Ruto.
Macron reiterated, however, that France “stands ready” to help allow the resumption of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz “in coordination with Iran.”

They're not going to do anything to stop Iran, except in coordination with Iran? So what is Macron even talking about? How does that even make sense? This is so French, just rolling over in the face of a threat from Iran.

This is just going to embolden Iran and make them see how weak the European response is.

At this point, I don't think I'd want any coordination with the French to deal with Iran, even if they offered it, since they can't even hold up for the feckless option they were proposing of ensuring free navigation after the fighting is over.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/05/10/feckless-allies-n2202197?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Last Week Was a Keg of Lib Tears and It's Time to Party Down

Last Week Was a Keg of Lib Tears and It's Time to Party Down

Kurt Schlichter

Last Week Was a Keg of Lib Tears and It's Time to Party Down — *AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite*

I have never understood people who say that you shouldn’t celebrate utterly defeating your opponents; that sounds like loser talk to me. And defeating our opponents is what we’ve done in the last week. We've used them, abused them, and generally treated them like a straight white cisgender Christian male from Dallas in the Harvard Womyn's Studies Department. This calls for a celebration. You should be partying. You should be clinking glasses. And you should be throwing their defeats back into their ugly, scrunched faces. Raise a toast of liberal tears and beer-bong it like an SEC linebacker at a kegger.

Last week was just beautiful. Remember, when we went into it, we were being told by all the smart people of smartness that the Democrats’ masterstroke in further gerrymandering the states was going to win them a bunch of new seats and consign us to House oblivion. They started it, initiating the g-wars by trying to erase Republicans in New York State, but they didn’t figure on us finishing it. And finishing it, we did by hammering a stake through the heart of their communist dreams. Now that the House is in play, with the new and fair districts, Republicans are going to make all the ridiculous Hakeem “Maximum Warfare” Jeffries curtain-measuring of the last few weeks a waste of time. We won in the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act. We won on the Virginia gerrymander. We won with Southern red states from Florida to Tennessee, immediately redistricting to eliminate the race-based blue seats. We also saw the pothead author of the Virginia gerrymander get her house searched as a prelude to getting indicted, got great economic news, plus we bombed those seventh-century semihumans again. And, as a cherry on top, we watched a reality television star humiliate a couple of half-wit communists in the Los Angeles mayoral debate.

It's been a welcome change from the last few months, where we couldn't seem to catch a break. But now we've owned the libs across the board, and they’re really sad, which makes it so much better when you make fun of them. But some are angry, and they’re threatening to defy the courts, secede, or even launch a violent revolution. That last one is Hassan Piker’s idea. I don’t see that dog-tormenting rich kid suiting up and locking and loading – that's for the dummies, like the genius who rushed the White House Correspondents Dinner – but if he did, I know about 20 million right-wingers with gun safes full of 5.56mm freedom who would be totally down with that. Yeah, roll those dice, tough guys. You Democrats have a bad track record of starting a civil war when Virginia doesn’t get its way.

They will cry and whine and fulminate on Bluesky, but they will swallow their humiliating defeat because they can’t do anything about it. They’ve lost control. They don’t control the government. The regime media has been neutered; we can’t be browbeaten by the Washington Post anymore. And most of all, their social sanctions engine is firing on empty cylinders. Oh no, eliminating Voting Rights Act districts in the South makes us racist! Except they were calling us racist before, and even if we accepted the bizarre concept that the Constitution allows you to set aside congressional districts for Black Democrats, they would just call us racist for something else. Republicans have unlocked the power of not caring what they say, and it is glorious.

That glorious Justice Samuel Alito–written decision in Callais was both legally correct and based. Obviously, the Constitution does not allow you to set aside districts for Black Democrats. Note that the "Democrat" part is the important part—they’re having a collective wetting of their collective panties over Tennessee gerrymandering its one remaining Democrat district into oblivion because it’s the most racist thing in the racist history of racism ever, except the Democrat tool holding the seat is as white as any Romney, and the Republicans are likely to nominate a Black woman to replace his jive turkey booty. That particular battle also highlighted one of the most hilarious images in recent history, one that the libs think is some sort of iconic demonstration of oppression. There’s a white cop who’s just trying to do his job standing there, and in his face is this ridiculous radical with a stupid Afro, smart guy glasses, and his hand stroking his chin, trying to channel Malcolm X but looking like the version you get at a discount at the 99 Cent Store. There was a time when that kind of ham-handed propaganda worked, and people might fall for it. Now, the only people who don’t side with the exhausted cop who is dealing with the idiot getting in his face are the middle-aged, sexually-unsatisfied wine women who now set the agenda for the Democrat Party.

And then, of course, there was the Virginia Supreme Court making the legally correct ruling that the election was flawed because it didn’t abide by any of the rules that govern referendums that propose to change the Virginia Constitution. My favorite part is how the Democrats expressed their shock that the court ruled after the votes were counted, even though the Democrats begged the court not to rule before the election happened. All you have to do is read the actual decision instead of listening to one of the lefty nitwits on the Twitter machine, but apparently that’s too much to expect. If you’re as much of a fan of bad online lawyering as I am—it’s this lawyer’s version of going and watching a demolition derby — you are living your best life right now. Every take is awful, except mine and a few lawyers I personally approve of.

But what’s even better is that the Republicans are totally unrepentant. Gov. Ron DeSantis is down there further gerrymandering Florida, and he’s going to get away with it, too, even though there are potential constitutional arguments against it. Oh well. This is about power; Republicans have finally figured out how to use it. We’re not going to be constrained by alleged norms and alleged principles and alleged guardrails anymore. You can call us racist all you want, and we don’t care. You might as well call us hamsters. It doesn’t matter to us because it’s all baloney. It’s all a scam. This is a bare-knuckle political fight, and we’re finally throwing fists. It’s great to see us landing some blows, and we figured out that the Democrats have glass jaws.

See, they didn’t have to fight before. The regime media never challenged them. They never challenged each other. They just had to get out there and say things, trying to shame us into obedience. But now we’re not letting that work. Now, we’re using our power, and we are putting wins on the board. They’re not used to it. They can’t handle it. You saw that debate with Spencer Pratt, who’s running for mayor in Los Angeles against the fat black communist and the thin Indian communist. He destroyed them. He treated them like they treated the Pacific Palisades. Oh, they’re going to still win the election, because people in Los Angeles are either affluent Champagne socialists, o poverty-stricken welfare cases begging for government handouts, the normal people having left for redder pastures. But Pratt demonstrated conclusively, in memorable clips, that these people don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, that they’re totally incompetent, and that when they’re faced with actual pushback, they collapse like California’s population.

The last week has been great. We’re finally fighting back, without apology and without quarter. This is the way it has to be. We didn’t make the rules. We’re just applying the rules as a suppository to our Democrat enemies. They’re going to cry. They’re going to scream. They’re going to call us racist even harder. And we will probably see some violence, more threats, more assaults, more murders. There's likely to be a low-grade insurgency, as we saw in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when another set of pampered commie brats decided to try to kill their way to power.

Well, they'd better hope it remains low-grade. We’ve been down this road before, and we’re not doing it again. Remember, there are at least 20 million guys out there absolutely ready to get kinetic. Democrats better hope that these patriots just satisfy themselves by celebrating their enemies’ misfortune, and the left better think twice before they provoke them to put down their beers and pick up their AR-15s.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2026/05/11/last-week-was-a-keg-of-lib-tears-and-its-time-to-party-down-n2675814?utm_source=pjmediambvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

The Crash Out Over the VA Redistricting Ruling Commences, and It's Only Going to Get Worse

The Crash Out Over the VA Redistricting Ruling Commences, and It's Only Going to Get Worse

By Bonchie

Things have gone from a joyous celebration to an incredibly bleak state on the Left in record time. After beginning the mid-decade redistricting battle years ago, Democrats were convinced they had outmaneuvered the GOP response in Texas with the passage of a 10-1 map in Virginia, eliminating four Republican seats in the otherwise purple state.

Obnoxious State Sen. Louise Lucas (D-VA), who was more recently raided by the FBI and is under investigation for corruption, led that fight. Here was a bit of her arrogance.

At the end of April, though, things began to shift. The Supreme Court handed down a ruling invalidating Louisiana's racially gerrymandered map, which had been drawn after Democrats sued to create a second majority-black district. As has so often been the case, left-wing lawfare backfired big time.

See: Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map in Major Voting Rights Decision

Then the hammer dropped. On Friday, the Supreme Court of Virginia nuked the Democrat referendum that led to the passage of the 10-1 map, holding that it violated the state's constitution. With that came the end of the road. While a desperate appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States is being made, it's fairly obvious they don't have jurisdiction, nor would you expect them to rule in the Democrats' favor anyway. Depending on how far the electorate swings in November, it may not save House Republicans, but they at least now have a fighting chance of holding onto the majority.

Naturally, the crash out has been epic. Newly minted left-wing darling Hasan Piker threatened violent revolution, while CNN hosts like Abby Phillip tried their best to hide their rage. Let's just say she wasn't successful.

Oddly enough, Phillip had none of this concern when Virginia passed that 10-1 map, which was clearly a step further than anything Republicans had done in Texas or elsewhere. She also didn't seem too worried about "representation" when it was rural voters being screwed over, so Democrats could racially gerrymander to their benefit. The moment the advantage changed hands, though, she was suddenly deeply upset. Very convenient.

The flailing didn't stop there. Others demanded, either directly or indirectly, that Virginia Democrats enforce the illegal, struck-down map anyway and elect representatives under it.

I've never seen people so incapable of understanding that actions have consequences. Almost every political escalation can be traced back to Democrat overreach. Whether it's suing over everything, leading to precedents that ultimately blow up in their faces, or eliminating the filibuster for judges, paving the way for Trump to get three Supreme Court justices through, they just can't seem to grasp that sometimes it's better to not keep pushing the envelope. All the Left knows is barrelling forward, whether there's a brick wall in their way or not.

So let me explain this plainly. The proposed remedies for their defeats, from stacking the Supreme Court to using illegal maps in Virginia, would only destroy the very institutions they are trying to take over. Does anyone think Republicans would sit idly by while Democrats seat illegally elected representatives in the House? Or that a Republican governor would ever listen to a ruling from a Supreme Court that was expanded and stacked by Democrats in Third World fashion? That would be the end.

Democrats have a choice. They can accept that they don't get to do illegal things and stack courts that rule against them, or they can tear the country apart, and I don't say that lightly. I'm usually pretty dismissive of such rhetoric, but some lines can't be crossed with any reasonable expectation of acceptance. Perhaps that's what they want, though? That's the scariest part to ponder.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2026/05/09/the-crash-out-over-the-va-redistricting-ruling-commences-n2202161?utm_source=rsmorningbriefingvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Nick Shirley Shares More About His 24 Hours in Cuba and... You Just Need to See This

Nick Shirley Shares More About His 24 Hours in Cuba and... You Just Need to See This

Sarah Anderson

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

On Monday, I shared with you how independent journalist Nick Shirley went to communist Cuba to try to get an idea what's really happening on the ground there and how the people feel about everything — their "leadership," communism, Donald Trump, the lack of oil and electricity, etc.

What resulted — and I don't think even Shirley expected any of this — was that the regime didn't let him have a moment of peace. Upon arrival, his cameras and equipment were seized at the airport, he and his two bodyguards were followed by undercover agents, they were interrogated by a two-star general, and they essentially had to flee the country, cutting the trip a couple of days short.

Shirley has been promising video from his trip all week (they didn't take his iPhone or a tiny microphone he'd bought, so he was still able to do some field work), and he finally released it. To be honest, I hadn't planned on working much this weekend, but I sat down and watched the video and knew I had to share. It's pretty powerful.

But it's not the threats to Shirley and his team that caught my attention. It's the responses from the Cuban people he was able to talk to before the regime began harassing him. Many of them refused to speak, fearing for their own safety. Some spoke but with their faces blurred. Others spoke but got quiet when he asked them certain political questions. And some, you could tell, just didn't give a flying flip anymore and were ready to share with the world what their lives are like. They're tired and losing their fear.

One guy who spoke at length had a great response when Shirley asked him what he would tell people in the United States who are beginning to embrace socialism and communism more and more these days. He said:

No. That's the worst thing that could ever happen, the worst thing you could ever do in life, is to go for socialism or communism, because it's utter crap. It's a no-go. It leads to misery, to oppression, to hunger, to everything. Look, nothing you can do... Nothing.

Your salary is only enough to buy a bottle of cooking oil. How do you think you can live like that? How can you live with a ration book that only gives you one or three pounds of sugar and one pound of salt? And there, every fifteen, every four, six months, seven years, they give you a chicken breast or an egg. The egg hasn't come for a year. It's been a year since we last had eggs. Imagine that.

He spoke of all the countries, like Mexico, sending humanitarian aid to the Cuban people, confirming that they never see it. "Those people who are coming, bringing all that aid, you don't see that aid," he said. "I don't know where they're delivering it, but you don't see that aid."

As I reported earlier this year, when Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum sent tons of food and hygiene products to Mexico, it was sold in military-controlled stores that only accept U.S. dollars, and it was sold it bulk at prices few in Cuba can afford.

Something else that was blatantly clear is that everyone Shirley spoke with is hopeful that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio will save them from the regime soon, so they can live normal lives. When Shirley asked this particular gentleman what he thought of Trump and Rubio, he said:

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, I'm waiting for you, please, to see if we can live like people, live like human beings, have our basic needs met like a human being, because we're living worse than animals. We're living worse than animals.

"Do you think it would be good for the United States to help Cuba?" Shirley asked.

"Sure, of course. Everyone's waiting for the intervention. The intervention, because people think that the intervention will kill people, no," the man replied. "They already know the key points, they know there's a central committee, that there's ground zero, they know. Everyone knows where the Castros are."

That seemed to be the sentiment with everyone willing to talk.

The conversation ended there because a woman began recording them with her phone. It's not clear if she was someone undercover working for the regime or simply a snitch. In countries like Cuba, there is major incentive to report your anti-regime neighbors, potentially landing them in jail. It's like that in Venezuela, too. It's sort of what many Democrats tried to bring to the U.S. during the COVID pandemic.

In March, a group of Code Pink idiots and Hasan Piker and a bunch of other leftists went to Cuba and said these people like living like this. It's their "island mindset." Shirley's video tells an entirely different story, and I hope you'll take the 35 minutes or so and watch it to get a clear picture of what life is like there. It's something you won't find anywhere else.

Glenn Beck Spots Something VERY Telling for Sale at The Obama Center's Merch Store

Glenn Beck Spots Something VERY Telling for Sale at The Obama Center's Merch Store

Doug P.

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has been architecturally compared to a giant dumpster or a North Korean guard tower at the DMV. It's a real looker:

And if you want to visit the Obama Center, make sure to bring a photo ID for entry to the Irony Wing and everywhere else.

The Obama Center also has a merch store, and Glenn Beck and his staff noticed a certain book that's for sale there. This might not surprise you:

Yep, it's real:

This description is really disgusting:

First published in 1971 and written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.

The Obama Center site says that proceeds from the sale of Rules For Radicals will basically go toward creating future Alinsky-ites.

What a romantic!

https://twitchy.com/dougp/2026/05/09/literally-selling-it-glenn-beck-spots-something-telling-for-sale-at-the-obama-centers-merch-store-n2428026?utm_source=thdailypmvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl