Could be an interesting weekend for all sorts of weapon wielders, not just skeet shooters

/

John Hinderaker, PowerLine:

Here We Go

Full text:

At 10:24 this morning, Friday February 27, the United States Ambassador to Israel emailed his own staff and told them to leave the country today.

Not next week. Not when convenient. Today.

Mike Huckabee, the man Donald Trump personally appointed to represent America in Israel, sent an email to every embassy employee in Jerusalem telling them that anyone wishing to depart should book “any available flight” and leave Israeli soil before the day ends. The embassy has shifted to “authorized departure” status, meaning the US government will pay for nonessential personnel and their families to evacuate. The New York Times obtained the email. The timestamp is 10:24 AM local time. The language says “no need to panic.” The action says panic.

When an ambassador tells his own people to leave the country he is assigned to, he is not managing risk. He is clearing the blast radius.

Authorized departure is the second-to-last step on the State Department’s crisis escalation ladder. The only step above it is ordered departure, which is mandatory evacuation. The United States has not reached ordered departure. But at 10:24 this morning it reached the step directly below it, and the ambassador personally urged speed.

Now hold this against what happened in the last 72 hours.

Wednesday, Geneva. Six and a half hours of talks. Araghchi called it the most serious session yet. The Wall Street Journal reported the US and Iran remain far apart on every core issue. Iran refused permanent zero enrichment. America refused anything less.

Thursday, 37 advanced combat aircraft landed at RAF Lakenheath in a single day. 12 F-35As. 14 F-15E Strike Eagles. Additional F-22s. The staging base that funneled the first wave of Raptors to Israel is now reloading with strike aircraft carrying 23,000 pounds of ordnance each.

Friday morning, the ambassador tells his people to leave.

Wednesday you negotiate. Thursday you reload. Friday you evacuate your own embassy.

That is not a sequence of unrelated events. That is a countdown visible to anyone reading the timestamps.

Huckabee’s email went out five hours ago. Tomorrow, Saturday February 28, Oman’s Foreign Minister meets Vice President Vance in Washington carrying Tehran’s response to Geneva. Technical talks are nominally scheduled for Vienna next week. But you do not tell your embassy staff to leave today if you believe next week’s talks will happen in a world that looks like this one.

The email says “make plans sooner rather than later.” Ambassadors are trained to communicate in precise diplomatic language where every word is calibrated. “Sooner rather than later” from a political appointee who does not speak in euphemism means the window for safe commercial departure is closing and he knows approximately when it closes.

India told its citizens to leave Iran. Germany told citizens in Israel to prepare for airspace closures. Beirut’s US embassy began evacuating. And now America’s own ambassador in Jerusalem is telling his own staff to get out of the country he represents.

Everyone with classified briefing access is moving in the same direction. Toward the exit.

Today. Not Monday. Not after Vienna. Today, Friday February 27.

The people who know what is coming are not waiting to find out. They are already on planes.

The only people still debating whether this is real are the ones without the clearance to read what Huckabee read before he typed that email at 10:24 am this morning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Meh — maybe; there’s a lot of stuff posted and published out there that ain’t necessarily so. I usually wait to comment on stories like these until there’s confirmation, this seems strongly plausible, given the ongoing buildup of U.S. ships and aircraft in the region, and besides, it’s a slow day for real estate news.

Just load with rock salt, and let fly

/

[Speaking of salt, you may want to take a grain of it along with this report because, despite a diligent search, all I could find on the Internet were posts denouncing a “reported” plan of Moms Demand Action to protest the event — those reports may be accurate, or they might be the product of a fervid imagination of some Xer, but it’s a fun story, true or not. — FWIW]

Stephen Green:

MINNESOTA NOT-SO-NICE: Hoplophobic* Harridans Plan to Protest Minnesota High School Clays Fundraiser This Weekend… Here’s What You Can Do.

You read that right. A bunch of teenagers who like to shoot clays for sport and are conducting a fundraiser for their club will likely face a passel of hoplophobic harridans and a sprinkling of hen-pecked beta males this weekend. These scolds think that’s the perfect venue to scream about “gun violence,” as if these kids are somehow the equivalent gang-bangers that turn cities like Minneapolis into war zones.

It’s odd that these gun-haters never pull these stunts in crime-ridden urban neighborhoods, isn’t it?

Nothing says “imminent threat to society” quite like a 16-year-old in safety glasses yelling “Pull!” before busting a clay bird. We’ve all seen the shocking videos of these clean-cut trap and skeet shooters looting convenience stores, robbing pedestrians or carjacking big city residents with their 12-gauge pump shotguns, right?

Let’s get real for a second. High school trap shooting is statistically one of the safest sports out there. Safer than football, wrestling, cheerleading and pretty much everything else including P.E. class. Zero school killing sprees have been carried out by a school trap team member. These kids are drilling discipline, focus, responsibility, and—gasp!—proper firearm safety under strict adult supervision. It’s a lifeline for some bookish types who’d otherwise warm the bench in other sports, giving nerds, quieter kids, and future engineers a place to shine, build confidence, and learn that tools aren’t toys. To say nothing for young people with disabilities.

But we can’t have that, can we? Because guns are icky. And scary. So instead of cheering on kids who are literally doing everything right, these lame lefties choose to harass teens and their families at a fundraiser to support their sport. Because nothing screams “protect the children” like intimidating actual children who are just trying to pay for ammo and targets.

So here’s the play for Minnesota gun owners and normal humans within driving distance: show up this Sunday.

*Word for the Day

Immediately after posting on the flaws in Google’s AI’ search function, I returned to that resource to learn the meaning of this new-to-me word. This time, it seems to have gotten it right:

AI Overview

Hoplophobic describes

an irrational, intense, and persistent fear of firearms or weapons, known as hoplophobia. Coined in the 1960s by Col. Jeff Cooper, it represents a specific phobia that may cause panic attacks, anxiety, and extreme avoidance behavior. It is sometimes used in political contexts to characterize intense opposition to gun ownership as illogical.

Key Aspects of Hoplophobia:

  • Definition: Derived from the Greek hoplon (weapon) and phobia (fear), it specifically refers to a fear of firearms, sometimes extending to all weapons.

  • Symptoms: Individuals may experience severe anxiety, panic attacks, rapid pulse, sweating, nausea, and trembling when in the presence of or even thinking about guns.

  • Causes:

    It can stem from personal traumatic experiences, environmental factors, or media portrayal of firearms as dangerous

  • Treatment: Similar to other phobias, it is managed through psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral techniques, and sometimes medication.

The term is often used in debates surrounding gun control to characterize opponents' views as emotional rather than rational.

Pending in Riverside, 9 days

/

47 Owenoke Way, $3.995 million. When this hit the market on the 18th I queried Gideon about its pricing; seemed a bit low to me. He agreed, but then pointed out that “in this market, the asking price simply no longer matters …. there’s nothing to buy, and 40 buyers will drive it up by a million or so.” That’s exactly what happened one street over earlier this week at 63 Wesskum Wood Road: listed at $4.190 million, sold three days ago for $5.148. Will lightning strike twice? Stay tuned.

Bonus Material: Artificial Intelligence

— you can trust it with your life, and certainly for lesser matters —

I used Google search to attempt to find my own previous post on this property — the Squarespace search function itself is awful — and got this “answer”:

AI Overview

47 Owenoke Way in Greenwich, CT, is the address of "

Applejack Farm," a historic estate formerly owned by Bethenny Frankel. Christopher Fountain, a local Greenwich real estate commentator, discussed the property's sale in his blog, "For What It's Worth," noting its significant price appreciation after renovations. The 3-acre property sold for $7.825M in 2024.

Key Details Regarding 47 Owenoke Way:

  • Location: Greenwich, Connecticut (Greenwich area).

  • Property Name: Applejack Farm.

  • Historic Significance: Dates back to 1743.

  • Former Owner: Bethenny Frankel.

  • Sale Price: $7.825 million.

  • Context: The property underwent extensive renovations by Frankel before being sold.

So now you know — or don’t.

Trust the science? Never, never, never

/

liar, liar, face on fire

As any rational person knew, and was savagely criticised for saying so.

IT WAS OBVIOUS EARLY ON THAT SURGICAL MASKS, CLOTH MASKS, AND OTHER “FACE COVERINGS” WERE JUST FOR SHOW, AND THAT ONLY N95 MASKS DID ANYTHING SIGNIFICANT: Pro-Maskers Accidentally Admit Masks Don’t Work, Debunking Anthony Fauci And Years Of Mandates.

In a new letter to the WHO head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, several mask fanatics, in an effort to promote the use of N95 respirators, claim that surgical masks do not “provide adequate protection against flu-like illnesses including COVID,” according to The Guardian. The letter says that there is “no rational justification remaining for prioritizing or using” surgical masks, because they provide “inadequate protection against airborne pathogens.”

Hilariously, one of the organizers of the letter, Professor Adam Finkel of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, also debunked one of the most popular pro-masking arguments. Anyone who argues against masking on social media has come across someone responding, “Well, if masks don’t work, why do doctors wear them?” Ignoring, of course, that not all doctors wear masks, only surgeons do.

But Finkel specifically highlights that those masks were never supposed to stop viruses or respiratory infections, but were “invented to stop doctors and nurses from sneezing into the guts and the hearts of patients.”

Finkel went further, saying that surgical masks are to respirators as typewriters were to computers. Those masks, he continued, are “obsolete.”

So the forever maskers now admit that cloth or surgical masks do not stop airborne viruses. They admit that surgeons do not wear masks to stop respiratory viruses, and that wearing lower-grade masks, the exact type worn by the vast majority of the world for years on end to stop COVID, could not have possibly stopped COVID.

N95 masks only work if they’re fresh, clean, and discarded after a few hours of use. One that you pull out of a pocket or purse is little better than a surgical mask. Masking was about compliance, not health.

Posted at 6:18 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Unfortunately, the Baked Bean State's gain is its northern neighbors' loss

/

High-tax Massachusetts has lost 200K residents to other states over the past 5 years

Massachusetts, long a bastion of progressive politics and high taxes, has quietly watched the equivalent of one-and-a-half Cambridges pack up and leave. 

A new analysis from the Pioneer Institute finds that more than 182,000 net domestic residents exited the commonwealth between April 2020 and July 2025, a sustained outflow that researchers describe as a lasting structural shift rather than a brief pandemic aftershock.

The report, “The Massachusetts’ Labor Force: Now and Beyond,” paints a picture of a state grappling with affordability pressures, demographic decline and slowing economic momentum. 

Those leaving skew younger, particularly adults between 26 and 34, draining the state’s future workforce and tax base.

The young professional class has simply moved across the border into southern Maine and New Hampshire, where they’ve set about busily recreating the social and government structures they claim to be fleeing. Stay put, Massholes.

Happy landings, A**hole

/

David Strom insists that we watch this entire 4-minute video of Gordon Guyatt’s immolation — “I promise you it’s worth it”. And he’s absolutely right (if just for the hilarious enjoyment of watching a “noted scientist” blow himself up), but be sure to read Strom’s entire column as well.

A Perfect Encapsulation of Why Nobody Trusts the Establishment Anymore

Dr. Gordon Guyatt is commonly referred to as "the father of evidence-based medicine."

That's a pretty lofty title to have, even if it's spoken informally. But Guyatt came to have it for a reason: he helped formalize a method and a movement to inject more scientific rigor into the practice of medicine, making it less of an art and more of a science. 

The goal is simple: base medical practice on high-quality research that removes bias by using systematic reviews of the literature to ensure people don't just pick results they favor. 

>>>>

But what happens when the "father of evidence-based medicine" takes a swipe at systematic reviews that demonstrated that "gender affirming care" is based on quack science? Hilarity ensues, if all you care about is a man who is full of himself gets taken down a peg; the destruction of the credibility of the entire medical infrastructure, if you actually think about it. 

Please watch the entire four minute video. I promise it is worth it:

The statement is still up, complete with the words medically necessary and Dr. Gordan Guyatt's name. https://t.co/kE6S5V6ZRi

— Mia Hughes (@_CryMiaRiver) February 25, 2026

Guyatt heads the McMaster University Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, and as the lead he penned a letter along with four—just four—colleagues arguing that, despite systematic reviews showing that gender medicine is based on low quality evidence, it should continue to be allowed to be used on children. 

On the webpage where this letter was released, the term "medically necessary" was used and included in the letter was the accusation that any attempt to stop sterilizing and mutilating children was anti-2SLGBTQIA+ bias. 

Here's how it all begins:

Systematic reviews related to gender-affirming care

Posted on August 14, 2025

Members and allies of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities have raised concerns about recent systematic reviews related to gender-affirming care. These concerns center on the funding source, and specifically on the potential for the research to be misused to harm trans youth and to deny gender-affirming care. 

>>>>

The letter ends by noting that the department, or perhaps the signatories including Dr. Guyatt, contributed to a legal defense fund to be used to ensure that children could continue to be sterilized and mutilated. 

So Guyatt, the man to whom the entire movement to based medicine on high-quality evidence, was the primary signatory of a letter from a department he heads, trashed people trying to save children from mutilation. And when confronted on the contradiction, he...whiffs.

"I didn't say that!" 

Oh, I did? Well, I, the man who insists on careful examination of the evidence, didn't actually read a statement put out under my name and including paragraphs I wrote. How dare you call me on it! It's unfair! That was then, this is now!

Is it any wonder that our trust in the medical establishment has collapsed? It absolutely, positively, should have collapsed, because this is what "trust The Science™" looks like. 

>>>>

I like the idea of EBM—rely, to the extent you can, which is limited—on the best evidence possible to make treatment decisions. At its best, medicine should produce better results than witch-doctory, and even though we are in a position where there are a lot of diseases and conditions for which we really don't have great evidence for treatments, we should do our best to get it, and rely on the best evidence where possible. 

That is, unless a powerful interest group bullies you into violating every principle you have. In that case, do everything you can to discredit the people who want to rely on the evidence. 

That's how you get the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, who opposed the COVID pandemic insanity, being called "fringe epidemiologists" by the most powerful doctors in the world. Evidence is one thing, but when ideology interferes, drop the evidence and go with the crowd. 

Watch that podcast clip again. It is the self-destruction, in real time, of a man who had the power to make a difference by doing the right thing and who chose not to. He literally didn't read what he helped author and sign, using his well-earned authority to trash people whom he was told to trash. He tossed his whole identity away because the 2SLGBTQIA+ "community" told him to. 

>>>>

Unfortunately, this behavior is common among our "expert" class, who use their prestige as a political cudgel. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which sounds all expert-y, is a bunch of cranks lecturing us about foreign policy. Climate "scientists" are politically-motivated bullies shilling for politicians and industries who are burning trillions of dollars to change the weather. 

"We only have 7 years to save planet earth!" Yeah, right. Heard that one back in 1981. All the glaciers will be gone by 2018! Yada yada. 

It isn't just cranks—it's most of the "expert" class, who deserve the same credibility as journalists and Adam Schiff. 

This is both a tragedy and a crisis. A tragedy, for obvious reasons. And a crisis because science and expertise are the foundation of the modern world. We need medicine that is not dangerous quackery, yet when push comes to shove, the "best and the brightest" sacrifice science to the political gods. 

In this case, they sacrificed children. 

Guyatt promised "If you can find the words medically necessary in my statement I'll have to jump off a bridge." 

I suggest he do so, at least metaphorically. Resign. 

"Oysterman"

/

Pine Tree Poll February 24 2026

The latest Pine Tree State Poll from the University of New Hampshire brought disturbing news for Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Tuesday when it showed Graham Platner with a significant lead in a senate general election.

In the Democratic primary, the radical political newcomer Platner drastically outperformed the aging Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine), with a blowout 38-point lead, as Platner drew 64 percent support compared with Gov. Mills’ 26 percent.

That lead has increased by four points since the Pine Tree State Poll’s October results.