October 8, 2025

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 9:57 pm by Glenn Reynolds 2

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 381

STACY MCCAIN: Typical Democratic Voter Inadvertently Explains the Great Mystery of Our Time.

Did you ever wonder how the Democratic Party got so crazy? For example, how is it that the governor of Illinois is inciting violent mobs against federal immigration authorities and meanwhile, in Virginia, every Democrat is rallying to the defense of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, who openly fantasized about murdering political opponents?

To summarize briefly: Bad causes attract bad people.

To understand the symbiotic relationship between toxic political movements and their toxic supporters, my advice is to first read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, especially Part 2: “The Potential Converts.” Next, you should read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, focusing on Chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Among the personal experiences that led me to comprehend this phenomenon was being swarmed by a mob of “Occupy” protesters in 2011. If you ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to a zombie horde like that, you would never doubt that the fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that its grassroots “base” is composed of dangerous lunatics.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 57

#RESISTANCE:

Posted at 8:01 pm by Glenn Reynolds 115

SHOCKER — BIG LIPS ARE A COMPETITION AMONG WOMEN: Surprising finding emerges from psychology study on lip size and attractiveness. “The preference for plumper lips on female faces was driven almost entirely by the female participants. Women in the study gave their highest ratings to female faces with enhanced lips. Male participants, when rating female faces, did not show a preference for plumper lips; their peak attractiveness ratings were for the female faces with their original, unaltered lip size.”

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 245

JEFFREY BLEHAR: The Ugliness Inside of Katie Porter.

Porter’s petulance, lack of preparation, and sense of self-entitlement were staggering. She was genuinely offended to have to answer a mildly difficult question, one that (as Watts emphasized) every other candidate handled with ease. She acted like it was an insult not only to her intelligence but her personal dignity. I have seen celebrities walk out on interviews, but rarely political candidates, rarely for such unfathomable reasons, and never with the whine of a spoiled brat: “I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you! I don’t want this on camera!” (I was hoping for “I want it now!” to complete the trifecta, but alas it never came.)

Dealing with the press is a requirement for elected politics. Donald Trump famously hates the press — and is happy to talk with them constantly, taking any question flung at him and chewing the cud verbally for hours. If even Kamala Harris is willing to go out there and serve up bowls of word salad like the Swedish Chef, it certainly shouldn’t be beneath the likes of Katie Porter. Porter’s beastly reputation has long preceded her (you don’t become an inner-circle member of Washington’s informal “bad bosses” Hall of Fame any other way), but this interview is an amazing display of who she really is — the ugliness inside her heart — that voters will find impossible to ignore. I suspect Xavier Becerra had the best fundraising day of his campaign today.

Blehar adds, “Porter was politically mentored by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, which is fitting — both carry themselves like Dolores Umbridge — as well as deeply ironic, given that Warren is well-liked by her staff and Porter was famously loathed by hers.”

Gosh, I can’t imagine why:

Here’s the video of Porter’s meltdown with CBS’s Julie Watts if you missed it last night:

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:39 pm by Ed Driscoll 203

THIS OUGHT TO BE CONSIDERED HIS RESIGNATION:

Posted at 5:09 pm by Stephen Green 538

DOG BITES MAN: CBS’s Colbert Spreads Even More Fake News. “Yeah. And if you’re just gonna completely make up stupid fearmongering arguments, at least make ’em fun! ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Democrats are spending trillions of dollars so they can Jurassic Park your children. It’s shocking. They’re going to trap your child in amber, suck out the baby blood, then turn your little child into T-rexes. The worst part is, the worst part, ladies and gentlemen: they’ll never be able to hug you.”

Um… comedy?

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green 47

OH, CANADA: Carney’s Last Resort. “Indeed, in a very real sense, we might say that the Carney/Liberal government is not only anti-Canadian but anti-civilization, threatening the rule of law, limits on state power, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, respect for human dignity, and fidelity to the principles of prosperity and private property, of which latter the sanctity of credit and financial independence are critical.”

Posted at 4:21 pm by Stephen Green 51

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Actually, we are going to tell you the odds of recovering New Glenn’s second launch.

Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success.

From the outside, that estimate seems on the high side of things. During the rocket’s first flight in January, the first stage was lost after successfully boosting its payload to orbit. Blue Origin has provided few details about the propulsion issues that led to the loss of the first stage, which never got close to the drone ship. But it’s clear that the company was unable to test many of the key aspects of controlling the rocket’s flight through the atmosphere and stabilizing itself upon touchdown. A lot of software has to go right to nail the delicate landing dance.

The only comparison available is SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 rocket. The company made its first attempt at a powered descent of the Falcon 9 into the ocean during its sixth launch in September 2013. On the vehicle’s ninth flight, it successfully made a controlled ocean landing. SpaceX made its first drone ship landing attempt in January 2015, a failure. Finally, on the vehicle’s 20th launch, SpaceX successfully put the Falcon 9 down on land, with the first successful drone ship landing following on the 23rd flight in April 2016.

SpaceX did not attempt to land every one of these 23 flights, but the company certainly experienced a number of failures as it worked to safely bring back an orbital rocket onto a small platform out at sea. Blue Origin’s engineers, some of whom worked at SpaceX at the time, have the benefit of those learnings. But it is still a very, very difficult thing to do on the second flight of a new rocket. The odds aren’t 3,720-to-1, but they’re probably not 75 percent, either.

Godspeed — and stick the landing.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green 25

EVERY 21ST CENTURY DEM PREZ DOES IT: Revelations about “Artic Frost” — the Biden era FBI’s spying on eight Republican senators and one GOP House member — quickly prompted comparisons with Watergate. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called it “arguably worse than Watergate.”

But, as I document in today’s The Washington Stand, nobody should be surprised by Artic Frost or any of the numerous other illustrations of Biden weaponizing the federal government against political opponents.

Starting with Bill Clinton, continuing with Barack Obama and then hugely expanding under Biden, political weaponization has been Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Democratic Chief Executives.

Posted at 3:14 pm by Mark Tapscott 44