Why Supergirl Sucks

As explained by Jedi Brooks. Why Supergirl SUCKS - A Scene Comparison. I'm not sure I have anything to add... Enjoy.

Friday Links - 24 July

Miguel Gonzalez starts things off with a story of Nashville's efforts to end pedestrian injury and death. They cannot be that dumb... yes, they are.

As long as the pedestrians keep thinking they are without responsibility for their lives and zero blame for their actions, they will keep getting killed.

The Other McCain - The Pro-Hamas Socialist Democrats

The Michigan primary is August 4, and it is fair to say that AIPAC is desperate to halt the slide of the Democratic Party into the de facto American branch of Hamas. Recent primary victories by anti-Israel candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America have set the alarm bells ringing.

George Shay at Chicago Contrarian - The Real Reason Behind Chicago's Teen Takeovers

What City Journal correctly identifies is that these events are fundamentally about intimidation. The point is not merely to gather. The point is to dominate public space, demonstrate power, create chaos, and show everyone else who controls the streets.

Lone Star Parson - Rapscallions

You know what? We moan and gripe about the collapse of Western Civ, and rightly so, but it's not over yet, not by a long way. On point, these young men don't vote Left, and guess what? They're armed.

William Teach at Pirate's Cove - Credentialed Media Upset Trump Blames Canada For Wildfires And Not Climate Doom

I’ll admit, there was no need to really blame Canada in this manner, but, hey, they’re unhinged eco-wacko/climate cultist forest management policies were stupid, just like with California

Again from The Other McCain - Of Lawyers, Samoans and Journalism

Had there been a vote for “Most Likely to Become a Conservative Pundit,” certainly no one would have nominated me. While I showed some penchant for feature writing, as entertainment editor of the student newspaper at JSU, I had no interest in politics.

Bayou Renaissance Man - Brainwashed ideology runs headlong into common sense

Ms. Plata-Nino is clearly left-wing and populist in her approach, defending peoples' right to use SNAP benefits in any way they please. Notice how she avoids, evades and dodges any attempt to get her to admit that sugary sodas are in no way nutritional, and aren't really "food" as the SNAP program was originally intended to fund.

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 22 July 2026: Summertime In July Edition

LLM company OpenAI says that LLM archive site Hugging Face was breached by hackers using OpenAI's LLMs to gain access to models hosted at Hugging Face in order to breach... I dunno. (Tech Crunch)

Seems legit.

Is Self-Defense Legal in Massachusetts?

Surely this is a sign of End Times, or something. Self-defense plea upheld in Springfield deadly shooting

The Hampden District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that no charges will be filed in connection with a deadly shooting in Springfield after investigators determined the involved individual acted in lawful self-defense.

According to Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni, the investigation into the July 5 shooting found that the incident began with a dispute on social media involving 35-year-old Robert Murchison of Springfield.

Robert Murchison did not survive.

A Massachusetts District Attorney makes a determination of lawful self-defense in less than a month. I'm flabbergasted. It was actually less than a week. The incident took place on the 5th, and the first article on self-defense being upheld was published on 9 July. (Though it didn't end up in my news searches until more recently.)

Springfield, which is the county seat of Hampden County, is about a 90 mile drive west of downtown Boston.

For a Massachusetts DA to move this fast, the evidence must be overwhelming.

According to the DA’s Office, investigators reviewed statements from those involved, an independent eyewitness account, Ring camera footage, 911 recordings, physical evidence collected at the scene, and text messages and social media communications exchanged before the incident.

Hat tip to AmmoLand News: Armed Wife Fires One Shot to Save Husband From Gunman at Massachusetts Home

A Firearm Made the Difference

This case presents another straightforward example of why the right to keep and bear arms includes the ability to protect not only yourself but also the people you love.

The woman did not go looking for a confrontation. According to investigators, the confrontation came to her home. She did not initiate the physical altercation, and she did not introduce a firearm into the dispute. She acted only after an armed man allegedly pointed a handgun at her husband and pursued him.

Demographics of Murder

I expect that people will say reality, and statistics are racist. A deep dive into murders, who murders whom - Crime Prevention Research Center

We have updated our data on who extremely concentrated murders are in the US. The worst 1% of counties (the worst 31 counties) have 20% of the population and 41% of the murders. The worst 2% of counties (63 counties) contain 30% of the population and 54% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 46% of the population and account for 71% of murders. But even within those counties, the murders are very heavily concentrated in small areas within those counties.

Click thru for graphs and details.

The Horror of a Post-Christian World

The Other McCain on Friedrich Nietzsche vs. Robert E. Lee

This is a complicated read, and no mistake. It covers a lot of ground, including - tangentially - why college students are so easily indoctrinated.

One of the benefits of being a bad student is that, by the time I began to take the world of ideas seriously, I was already an adult, with a job, a wife, three kids and a mortgage. It was in the early 1990s, when I was on the staff of the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, that I began haunting the local used book store, snapping up old volumes at 50 cents or a dollar each, pursuing an autodidactic course of remediation, to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that had by then become apparent to me.

I think you will find it an interesting read.

Self-Defense Is Legal in North Carolina

But then I thought it was. Homeowner who shot attempted burglar in chest won’t face charges, Gastonia police say

On the morning of Sunday, July 12, a homeowner fired one shot at a man who was trying to break into his home, Gastonia police reported on July 22. The man, identified as 57-year-old Cedric Ford, was hospitalized for a gunshot wound in the chest and later arrested, police said.

Security camera footage shared by police showed Ford appear to open the window of a home and try to push through it. He then used his backside to try to push through the front door before returning to the window, according to the video.

The homeowner, an elderly person with disabilities, fired once through the window.

“The homeowner told investigators he did not know he had struck Ford, but he did know his actions stopped the attempted break-in,” police said on social media on Wednesday.

Gastonia, North Carolina, is about a 20 mile drive west of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina.

When he got to the hospital, Ford told a story about a drive-by shooting. That earned him an extra charge, obstruction.

Officials said Ford was taken into custody after his release from the hospital. Ford was charged with attempted first-degree burglary and felony obstruction of justice.

Self-defense is a human right.

Contrast the week that it took for officials to make a determination in North Carolina, with the two years it took officials in the UK to reach the same decision.

Leftist Violence

Andy Ngo of Ngo Comment has two stories of Leftist violence.

First up we have ties of ANTIFA to world communism. State Department Links Antifa's Lawyers to Decades of Cuban Communist Influence

The 100-page report, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” released on Monday, details how Havana spent nearly seven decades cultivating left-wing American radicals, extremist organizations and sympathetic institutions to advance revolutionary leftism inside the United States.

The second story is Ngo: The Left’s Denial of Leftist Terrorism Is Empowering More Terrorists

On July 19, I joined GB News in London to discuss the significance of the U.S. State Department’s international summit on the growing crisis of left-wing terrorism.

The conference was met with ridicule from liberal media and Democrats. That reaction itself demonstrates how they play a key role in denying the existence of radical leftist violence.

Both are worth a look.

Chicago's Pensions Are a Mess

Meep at STUMP has an update on the insanity. Chicago Pension Watch: No, There Aren't Many Choices

Let me round up the latest “discourse” on the “way out” for Chicago pensions.

But first — where the pensions stand.

In 2025 Chicago's pension debt rose to $36.4 billion. That according the city itself.

One of the things that comes up is a Detroit-style, Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

The principal difference is that Detroit owned a bunch of art, which could be sold. Chicago doesn't own any art, or not on that scale.

If you are not a finance person (and some people who are in finance) do not necessarily understand what Chapter 9 bankruptcy can and cannot do.

It’s a legal process in federal court. It doesn’t cause money to appear from nowhere. It doesn’t cause art that a city doesn’t own to come into being — people get confused when proposing “Hey, let’s have a Grand Bargain like Detroit had in its bankruptcy!”, forgetting that Detroit for some odd reason owned art it could hold ransom. As far as I know, Chicago the city owns no such art.

Chapter 9 bankruptcy, i.e., municipal bankruptcy, is not the same thing as bankruptcy for an individual or a company. The city is not going to liquidate. Creditors know that. The creditors have limits on what they’re going to get — they will not necessarily get zeroed out (but some might).

The funding rates for the various pension funds are sad. The national average for municipal pension funds of 82.5%. The police pension is funded at 25.5% of liabilities. The firefighters pension is funded at 25.2% of liabilities. When you include all of the funds, and all of the liabilities, Chicago’s pension funds were only funded at 28.1% of liabilities.

Click thru for the details.

“But you promised” and “It’s not my fault” don’t mean much when the money runs out.

Wednesday Link Roundup - 22 July

Wombat-socho is first with In The Mailbox: 07.20.26

Racket News: Anatomy of a Struggle Session
STUMP: Sports (and other) Gambling – The Modern Scourge

EBL - MAGA Kamala Kamalot 🥥🌴☀️

Instapundit: AoSHQ: Kamala is going to give it another shot
What could possibly go wrong?

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 19 July 2026: Woolly Hippo To You Edition

China's Kimi K3 identifies itself as Claude, betraying its distilled origins. (WCCFTech)
You were saying, Bean?

The Glibertarians - Saturday Links of Even More Retardation

So who is more reliably retarded, Trump or the Team Blue cats chasing his laser pointer?
Seems like a lot for mediocre food.

Small Dead Animals - Saturday On Turtle Island

The Democrat Party’s America: The Trump speech. Dems find a worse candidate.
China Carney’s Canada: Forest fires. Carney creates jobs in Michigan.

Don Surber - HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK

Homeland Security tweeted, “She entered the United States on April 14, 2024, on a visa set to expire on September 6, 2024. In violation of our nation’s laws, she overstayed her visa and failed to depart.”

Vlad Tepes - Canada finally finds way to tax the air, UK and Canadian media shape reality in predictable ways, health Canada hides deadly detail about mRNA shots: Links 1 for July 19, 2026

3. There was a murder in the UK of a prominent politician. But the bigger threat to civilization than the killer is the media. This has become the new normal. The media fabricates or enforces a state narrative in a way that the public is mentally disarmed

Again from Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 07.21.26 (Afternoon Edition)

Upstream Reviews: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin
John C. Wright: Aition & The Honor of Poets

A View from the Beach - Flotsam and Jetsam - Trump Voting Speech Reactions Day 2

Mary Chastain at LI cites Mullin: ‘We’ve Identified 250,000 Noncitizens Registered to Vote’ in Four States, “We also worked with proactive states to identify 28,000 non-citizens on their voter rolls, plus 400,000 individuals that are still registered to vote that are deceased.”

Gates of Vienna - News Feed 7/19/2026

The United States added nearly 3.5 million new businesses in the first half of 2026, breaking previous expectations, according to a new report.

Political Hat - News of the Week (July 19th, 2026)

Mace, Norman still eyeing Senate bids despite Trump snub
Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) are both still considering bids for the U.S. Senate despite President Trump endorsing Darline Graham Nordone for a full six-year term.

Bacon Time!!!! - Sunday Linkange

Pirates Cove Bummer: Companies Are Blowing Off Their Climate Doom Commitments
Freedom Is Just Another Word.. .Saturday Memes…

Maggie's Farm - Saturday morning links

Expecting Tenants to Pay Rent Regarded as “Violence”
Trump Is Right About Voting Machines - And if you doubt that, just ask Obama-Appointed Judge Amy Totenberg.

J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades HQ - The Morning Report — 7/ 21 /26

There’s nothing like seeing government waste and fraud firsthand to make you appreciate how pernicious it is.
Beyond Fraud: Citizen Journalists Unmask Crazy Government Waste

Doug Ross - Larwyn’s Linx: Deep State crawls out of the woodwork: Meet former FBI executive Nikki Floris

• The Vance-Rogan Interview - Dana Loesch • Netanyahu slams NYC mayor’s arrest threat - Joshua Marks

Anonymous Conservative - News Briefs – 07/18/2026

Is it a coincidence “Flock” is a term associated with herding Sheep? Does anyone think the Founders would have been down with the government grabbing this information about everyone, had it been around back in the days of the nations founding?

I leave you with Sunday Funnies For 07-19-26 from Stately McDaniel Manor, Sunday Funnies from Flopping Aces, Sunday’s the Weekend is almost over Meme Drop 7-19-26 from Midwest Chick's Place, and Gunday Monday from Bustednuckles.

Welcome to the Panoptican

FLOCK is not alone, of course, they are just the most well-known company building the surveillance state. When Every Streetlight Becomes A Surveillance Tower

For years, Americans were told that the greatest privacy battles would happen online. The debate centered around social media, smartphones, and internet tracking. Few imagined that one of the most controversial surveillance technologies would instead appear quietly on neighborhood streets, mounted atop poles at busy intersections and neighborhood entrances.

Today, those poles have become a flashpoint in a much larger debate over technology, artificial intelligence, and the future relationship between citizens and government.

Read the whole, disturbing thing, and the few signs that people have had enough of the creeping technology and are pushing back. (Hat tip to MaddMedic.)

And you vocabulary word of the day (Courtesy of Merriam-Webster): Panoptican

a circular prison built with cells arranged radially so that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners

Periscope Up

Today we have a song that came to me by way of the Pandora streaming service, and a "radio station" based on the music of Buckethead.

Emancipator is the stage name for an American DJ/Producer. I know next to nothing about him.

This song is "Periscope Up" by Emancipator from the 2006 album Soon It Will Be Cold Enough.

The Chicago Weekend

HeyJackass! is on vacation... so we have to go with other sources. 3 dead, 15 hurt in Chicago weekend shootings, according to Chicago police - CBS Chicago

The don't say what the consider the weekend, but they do include Friday evening in the mix.

In the first shooting of the weekend, Chicago police officers responded to the 400 block of North Central Avenue around 7:47 p.m., where a 29-year-old man was shot while standing near the sidewalk.

The last shooting they include in the mix was from 3:43 AM Monday. Click thru for all the details.

Hat tip to Breitbart and Chicago: At Least 11 Shot Friday into Saturday Afternoon.

The Chicago-Sun Times noted that 228 have been murdered in Chicago thus far in 2026.

Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

Things won't work out for you. Man armed with knife shot and killed by customer at Cerritos restaurant, sheriff's department says

[Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department] Deputies said a preliminary investigation found that the armed man entered the restaurant and ran through the kitchen/service areas, "frightening customers and staff."

A customer who was "lawfully armed and possessed a valid concealed carry permit" confronted the man and ordered him to drop the knife, according to deputies. That's when the man reportedly charged toward the customer with the knife, and the customer shot him.

There is more. He apparently had a stolen truck, and stabbed himself at some point. Click thru for those details.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department source said an off-duty officer was present and witnessed the shooting, but did not fire their weapon.

Self-defense is a human right. We will have to wait to see what the LA District Attorney has to say about this incident. (Or why do you think the off-duty officer stayed out of it?)

U.S. Crime Rate versus Canada and Australia

When the Left actually talks about crime, as opposed to Social Justice of the courts and/or the police, they usually talk about "gun crime," and not crime in general. There is a reason for that. From John R. Lott Jr., at RealClearInvestigations: Mythbuster: U.S. Much Safer Than Many Peer Nations

The conventional wisdom is that Canad and Australia, thanks to their Draconian gun laws, are much safer than the US.

The data, however, undercuts this narrative. While the United States still leads in some categories, on the whole it has significantly less violent crime per capita than those two nations.

Regarding homicide, the most heinous crime of all, it’s true that in 2025, the U.S. murder rate was about four per 100,000 people – roughly twice Australia’s and Canada’s 2024 homicide rate. Yet it’s also true that homicides account for only a tiny fraction of violent crime. In 2024, homicides represented just 0.21% of violent crimes in the U.S., based on National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimates of rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Murder comprises an even smaller fraction of crimes in Australia and Canada.

Click thru for the data presented in nice graphs.

I will just leave you with this bit about Australia and the attitude toward rape.

In Australia, there are numerous complaints that “Rape is effectively decriminalized.” In New South Wales, of the 9,138 sexual assaults reported to police in 2022, there were only 1,016 convictions – just an 11% conviction rate. Indeed, during a recent lecture that I gave to college students in New South Wales in February, several women said there was no reason to report rapes and sexual assaults to the police because they believed nothing would happen to the criminal and it was personally embarrassing to come forward publicly.

As a result, an analysis based solely on police statistics can be misleading when comparing countries. Victimization surveys tell a different story.

Read the whole thing.

Shooting Spree Is Family Execution

What were you doing when you were 16? I'm guessing mass murder wasn't on the agenda. ‘I love blood’: Officials reveal texts between teens accused of killing 5 family members

This wasn't a mass shooting. As he shot people at different times.

At 16 years old, Ja’ymier Davis is facing 12 charges as an adult, including five counts of first-degree murder.

The other person arrested in connection with the mass shooting is a 15-year-old girl who faces charges in juvenile court.

He killed his aunt. Then he killed his cousin while cleaning up the 1st crime scene, because he walked in and discovered the cleaning. It goes on from there.

East St. Louis, Illinois, is directly across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri.

Click thru for the details, including the antics of the defense attorney.

I miss living in a civilized society.

Tuesday Links - 21 July

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony starts us off with an AI story. Daily News Stuff 17 July 2026: Dwarves Are Back On The Menu Edition

1Password now lets Claude use your passwords - without giving it access to the passwords themselves. (Nerds xyz)

Claude sends a request to 1Password, the user approves it, and Claude ends up with access to the desired service without ever seeing the password. It's a pretty elegant solution to a situation set up mostly by crazy people.

Crime Research Org - Major Decision: U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit Strikes Down New Jersey’s semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines bans. Copy of decision is available here.

As expected, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in an en banc decision, has struck down New Jersey’s prohibitions on semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines. It is a major decision because he creates a circuit court split for the first time.

William Teach at Pirate's Cove - DHS Finalizes Rule That Means Students Can’t Just Stick Around

Before Obama and especially Biden just started letting everyone in roughly 45% of illegal aliens were people who overstayed their visas. If they are closely monitored than reapplying after undergrad and grad should be no big deal.

Bearing Arms - Is China Also Meddling in Second Amendment Fight?

On Thursday night, President Donald Trump took to (most of) the airwaves to announce some disturbing evidence regarding China and its attempts to meddle in the 2020 election.

Not the Bee - Bodycam footage shows The View host Sunny Hostin trying to convince cops not to arrest her son for trespassing

Here's the host of The View, Sunny Hostin, appearing to use her fame and position to get her son out of trouble.

Again from Pixy Misa - Daily News Stuff 18 July 2026: Accidental Umpires Edition

AWS is experiencing a wee spot of bother with its billing system. (The Register)

Speculation is that it's a unit conversion error in the cost estimation tool, but all we know for sure is that people who barely use the service are being alerted to cost estimates in the billions of dollars, and for businesses that have active applications the predicted bills run into the trillions.

AWS say they are looking into it.

Clayton Cramer - New Jersey Assault Weapon & >10 Round Magazine Ban Overturned by 3rd Circuit

To my shock and pleasure they broadened the ruling to protect all the militia appropriate firearms as well as the LCMs. And yes, this is a case on which i worked.

The Other McCain - Knife-Wielding Psycho-Tranny Is Former Arizona Democratic Party Official

Just a typical Democrat in 2026:

Wombat-socho - Rule 5 Monday: Redhead in Denim

Son of Silvercon IV ended yesterday – great success! Here’s a redhead in overalls.

Beautiful Lie

Evanescence released their new album on Friday 5 June. I had been waiting for this album's release since I first heard the single that they released in April.

Evanescence is a Rock & Roll band fronted by singer/keyboardist Amy Lee. They had a lot of trouble when they released their first album in 2003, because the tiny minds running the music industry and radio stations refused to even listen to their music. "A chick and a piano" was not rock. Even though guys with pianos, e.g. Elton John, Freddie Mercury, etc., were staples of Rock & Roll.

The band consists of:

• Amy Lee – vocals and keyboards
• Troy McLawhorn – guitar
• Emma Anzai – bass
• Tim McCord – guitar
• Will Hunt – drums

This song is "Beautiful Lie" by Evanescence from their 2026 album Sanctuary.

International Summit on Radical Leftist Violence

From Andy Ngo at Ngo Comment: U.S. Hosts First Ever International Summit on Radical Leftist Violence

Before we dive in, here is the subtitle, and it is not surprising.

The summit has infuriated Democrats and their allies in the liberal media.

Color me shocked. Here is the thing, though. I don't care about your feelings.

The conference is in Washington, DC, and is hosted by the State Department, which probably has the liberals in even more of a fit.

Sec. Marco Rubio is the first U.S. Secretary of State to openly confront the growing scourge of radical left-wing violence and terrorism coming from the likes of Antifa and trantifa militants, and other far-left extremists.

That’s why the left and its media are in full meltdown over the summit in Washington. Acknowledging the threat undermines years of minimizing, excusing, or supporting the violence perpetuated by their side.

There is a video report from Newsmax, that is less than 7 minutes.

Portland Police to Citizens - You're On Your Own

Imagine that someone is trying to grab your 7-year-old child out of your arms, and police take 40 minutes to respond. Some parents in Portland do not have to imagine, because that is what happened.

Fox News has the details. Family stopped alleged child kidnapper as police say staffing shortage delayed response up to 40 minutes. So here is what happened:

Portland police say a staffing shortage contributed to a 30- to 40-minute response to an alleged attempted kidnapping of a 7-year-old tourist at a downtown waterfront park over the weekend, with newly released police data showing the city typically has about 59 patrol officers on the streets at any given time.

Police took 30 to 40 minutes to respond because of staffing issues.

Hughes said the bureau was operating with 41 patrol officers across Portland that night, along with 10 officers working overtime, a roughly 24% reduction from planned staffing. He said there are no reserve patrol officers who can be called in immediately when multiple major incidents unfold at once.

This is Colion Noir's video Portland Police Just Told Citizens They’re On Their Own

This is the statement made by the Portland Police Department:

We don't have the appropriate amount of police officers to handle the amount of demand for police services.

Translation: "Don't count on us to be there when you need us, because there are not enough cops to go around."

The attempted kidnapping was not the only example cited in the video. The video is only 6 minutes.