I’m very glad you’ve made it today. Welcome to Friday, March 13, 2026. Aside from being Friday the 13th, it’s National Sleep Awareness Month. An odd thing; it is also National Caffeine Awareness Month. It’s also National Popcorn Lover’s Day. Talk about your conflicting goals. Don’t ask me; I didn’t know any of this until I opened my calendar.
Today in History:
1852: Uncle Sam cartoon figure debuts in the New York Lantern Weekly.
1877: 15-year-old Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs.
1894: J. L. Johnstone of England invents the starting gate for horse racing.
1923: American inventor Lee de Forest demonstrates his sound-on-film moving pictures.
1938: World News Roundup is broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio in the United States.
1956: American western film The Searchers debuts.
1970: Digital Equipment Corp introduces the PDP-11 minicomputer.
1986: Microsoft has its initial public offering and lists on the NASDAQ.
2004: Luciano Pavarotti performs in his final opera, Tosca, at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Birthdays today include: actor Paul Fix, bandleader Sammy Kaye; CIA Director William Casey; Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee; Mike Stoller, Neil Sedaka, Charles Krauthammer, and Jamie Dimon. If today’s your day, too, have a happy birthday.
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Interesting piece from Mark Judge this morning:
Conservative journalist Ben Domenech was just named the opinion editor of the Daily Wire. On X, Domenech promised “bracing and fearless” pieces.
That’s not going to happen. Over the past three decades (or more), conservative media has poured all of its resources into owning the woke. This was bracing when political correctness entered the universities in the early-1990s and then bled out into the larger culture. Wokeness presented a threat to free speech and sanity.
Now, however, that battle, and many others, have been won. Nobody buys transgenderism anymore. Roe v Wade was overturned. Most Americans, even those against the war, acknowledge that radical Islam’s a threat. The massive fraud uncovered in Minneapolis has opened everyone’s eyes to how the Democrats operate. People laugh at Hollywood garbage like The Bride! Donald Trump, the most optically incorrect politician in history, is the president.
In short, we won. Yet because the cultural right didn’t prepare for life after victory, they have nothing to write about, aside from the same old greatest hits. The most recent Domenech piece for the Daily Wire is about “the rise of the new radical chic.” Domenech is using a 50-year-old Tom Wolfe piece to make the argument that people on the far left are still crazy. That’s the most conventional of conventional wisdom. Because the Daily Wire didn’t invest in great arts writers, opting indeed for own-the-liberals ace Candace Owens, they were left with nothing new or interesting to say about the culture. Recently Ben Shapiro announced that he’s working on a new film with Jonathan Majors. Shapiro took to social media to hype the film with his post, “You’re not going to BELIEVE what we’re doing.”
Let me guess. Owning the libs.
Judge then goes on to blow up his own argument:
Thirty years ago, I wrote my first article for a conservative magazine—The Weekly Standard. It was about the ridiculous pseudo-radicalism that had taken over Georgetown University. I abandoned a dream of teaching at the university because of the Marxists in the English department, who were just as censorious and socialist as the editors at The Washington Post who’d started changing my copy to be more progressive.
AHA!
I’m sorry, Mark, I hate to burst your bubble, but I must say there’s a problem; you’re apparently still under the misguided idea that the Weekly Standard was ever conservative. Perhaps your definition of “conservative” could use a bit of examination.
I’ve already written at some length back in January of this year, about one of the founding voices of that now dead publication, and the reason it isn’t around anymore. I said at the time that nobody takes Bill Kristol seriously anymore. By and large, that’s still true. Kristol, for all his positioning, was never what most conservatives would call “conservative”. His publication, therefore, didn’t sell.
Judge, and by extension Kristol, believe that keeping the left at bay is not worth our time anymore. Of course, Kristol made that clear when he went on Defense for Joe Biden’s economic policies in The Bulwark, back in 2022. We were informed with great authority that Biden’s inflation would subside. That authority was rather laughably short-lived. As you may recall, inflation went up by some 9% before that very day was done. It was in that same piece that we were (again with great solemnity befitting the authority Kristol has always attributed to himself), that the Democrats would do very well indeed, come that November. You may recall how THAT turned out, as well. I’m quite sure Kristol and his gang remember it too; we got nothing from them on those topics but a very careful silence afterward. I can’t imagine that memory isn’t at least a bit painful. To my memory, we never saw a correction. On the other hand, maybe the reason we didn’t see it is that nobody reads The Bulwark, either, and probably for the same reason that The Weekly Standard went under.
Judge is correct when he rattles off the conservative victories, but one must wonder about the endgame he foresees when it comes to dealing with the bat-poop left. I am reminded of the nearly 60 years of increasingly crazy nonsense pushed on us by the left, particularly when they had the power of government in their hands. As a country, we ended up being very damaged by that leftist push.
Does Judge seriously consider that inside of four years, they will consider themselves any more than temporarily deterred from 60 years of momentum, and that therefore, a change of direction on the right is called for?
In a word, my answer is a resounding “No.” Does the phrase “We’re not going back” ring any bells for you, Pavlov?
I suggest the damage that the left has caused over that six-decade period is not so easily repaired. I regard our conservative position in much the same way I regard our situation today in Iraq. In both cases, there’s a difference between holding off the hordes and making damned sure they won’t come back again.
We have started winning, that’s quite true, and the positive effect on our national psyche has been nothing short of glorious. As Judge himself suggests, the conservative media has been pouring all of its efforts for the last 30 years into, in his words, “Owning the left”. That three-decade fight has allowed us this brief victory. Dear reader, you and I both know the moment the Democrats get back in power, we’ll see the same playbook they’ve been running for the last six decades, and particularly the last 10. More attacks on MAGA and more lawfare on Trump himself, and a return to the leftist agenda, which has never really gone away.
The establishment critters like Kristol (for example) are far too willing to back off, and frankly, I must wonder why.
Understand my objection clearly, please: It took nearly 60 years of leftist propaganda and the left in government power to put us in the dire situation we found ourselves in. It will take no less an effort, and no less time, to right the ship on anything like an extended basis. This is not just about archiving, as Judge suggests, a “balance.” That’s not enough. We must make sure our opponents don’t come back with any appreciable strength.
Now is not the time to stop hammering our agenda home. Conservatives understand this. I’m not so sure about Mark Judge, despite the way the left abused him over the Brett Kavanaugh thing. You’d think after that bit, he’d never back off.
Oh, and before I forget, I’ll also be watching for any appreciable changes at The Daily Wire, with Domenech at the helm. I’m inclined, given his relationship with John McCain’s daughter (since McCain was less than conservative), to believe that I’ll be less than impressed. He’s already got two strikes against him.
Thought for the day: “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” —Steve Martin
I’ll see you tomorrow.
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