Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian
Posted By: 4250Luis, 7/26/2026 6:35:33 AM
It seems that everyone is talking about two things these days: The Odyssey (or, to be more strictly accurate, The Odyssey as reimagined by Christopher Nolan) and the Smithsonian Institution, specifically the National Museum of American History (NMAH), one of the roughly 20 museums that huddle under the taxpayer-funded umbrella of the Smithsonian. I have not seen the film version of Homer’s epic. But I feel confident in reporting that, for sheer entertainment, the televised cross-examination of NMAH’s longtime director, Anthea Hartig, easily beat out the cinematic version of The Odyssey. How can I say this, not having seen Matt Damon emoting around in his beard and shiny armor? Well,
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The ideological excesses of the American Left are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Political commentator Hasan Piker recently appeared in a Mao jacket—a conspicuous tribute to the Chinese dictator whose regime was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people—before addressing college students.
Around the same time, Melat Kiros, a Democratic Socialists of America candidate in Colorado, declared that America would stop “exploiting the world” only after the country elects enough immigrants from the Global South.
That is more than a campaign slogan. It reflects an ideology that seeks to replace America’s founding principles with an entirely different worldview.
It is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. Anytime a Democrat politician looks into a television camera and declares a new policy is “for the kids,” history tells us it is time to do three things: grab your Bill of Rights, lock your wallet, and check your firearms.
The political left has mastered the art of semantic camouflage. Because leftists’ true intentions—total state control and the systematic dismantling of individual liberty—are entirely unpalatable to the average citizen, they must cloak their radical agendas in the warm blanket of public safety.
The Trump administration is moving to fill gaps in the trucking industry by encouraging military veterans to step into roles left open after a crackdown on commercial driver's licenses issued improperly to immigrants. This approach makes practical sense. It rewards service members with skills already honed behind the wheel of heavy vehicles while addressing a workforce need through legal, qualified Americans. Under longstanding federal programs, veterans who operated military trucks weighing more than 2.5 tons in the past year and have two years of safe driving history in military heavy vehicles can skip the on-road skills test for a commercial driver's license. They still must pass the written exam.
Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian
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It seems that everyone is talking about two things these days: The Odyssey (or, to be more strictly accurate, The Odyssey as reimagined by Christopher Nolan) and the Smithsonian Institution, specifically the National Museum of American History (NMAH), one of the roughly 20 museums that huddle under the taxpayer-funded umbrella of the Smithsonian.
I have not seen the film version of Homer’s epic. But I feel confident in reporting that, for sheer entertainment, the televised cross-examination of NMAH’s longtime director, Anthea Hartig, easily beat out the cinematic version of The Odyssey. How can I say this, not having seen Matt Damon emoting around in his beard and shiny armor? Well,
In 2023, the New York Times ran an article entitled, “Increasingly, Women Are Running the World’s Great Museums.” Some of the museums mentioned were the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.
But it’s not only museums where women dominate. Other arts and cultural institutions seem to be on a permanent trajectory to hire women as CEOs. On the surface, this shouldn’t be a problem. Qualified women should certainly take their place at the top if they are the best candidates for the job.
But…. There seems to be a troubling common denominator here. The vast majority of the women in these positions fit a certain mold.
Budweiser closed out its 150th-anniversary Super Bowl campaign this year with Clydesdales, a bald eagle, and the tagline “Made in America.” The ad won USA TODAY’s Ad Meter as the game’s most popular commercial and leaned hard into the same red-white-and-blue imagery Anheuser-Busch has used for its “American Careers, American Beers” push, which celebrates the roughly 65,000 U.S. jobs the company says it supports. What the ad didn’t mention is that Anheuser-Busch is a subsidiary of AB InBev, the Belgium-headquartered brewing giant, and its parent company has spent this year both closing American breweries and lobbying U.S.
City Jewish leaders Friday demanded Mayor Zohran Mamdani “stop fanning the flames of hatred and division” after a nut stabbed a religious man in a suspected antisemitic hate crime on the Upper West Side — but Hizzoner offered nothing more than a canned tepid response.
Raul Morales, 51, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he attacked the two victims — Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, a 50-year-old Jewish man, and Chok Sung, a 57-year-old Asian man — in vicious separate attacks blocks from Central Park and minutes apart Thursday afternoon, police said.
“We’re horrified and heartbroken by yesterday’s attacks. But to be clear, we’re no longer surprised,”
A veteran Uber driver said DFW’s airport queue displayed a wait of zero to 15 minutes, but he received no rides for more than 45 minutes. He said regular Uber requests resumed after he left the airport’s geofenced queue.
DX documented drivers using multiple phones and tablets, vehicles with partially obscured plates, and one man denying that he had a work permit, green card or H-1B visa.
Federal prosecutors have charged rideshare schemes involving fraudulent or rented accounts, GPS spoofing, bots and hacked phones that allowed drivers to enter airport queues while physically elsewhere.
Democrats have spent years attacking voter identification requirements as voter suppression. A new national poll found that argument is collapsing, including with their own voters. Eighty-three percent of registered voters support requiring a valid photo ID proving U.S. citizenship before someone can register to vote, while 77 percent support requiring one before a ballot can be cast. Among Democrats, support stood at 72 percent for registration and 62 percent for voting.
The numbers caught Bret Baier's attention during Thursday's "Special Report." He called the results "pretty overwhelming" before asking panelist Ben Domenech, a conservative commentator, whether Republicans should make voter ID a bigger issue heading into November.
Baier said:
An ‘October surprise’ from China could
spike oil prices ahead of midterm election
for Trump 2 replies
spike oil prices ahead of midterm election
for Trump 2 replies
After the outbreak of war in Iran, China drastically reduced oil imports. Instead, Beijing relied on its vast oil reserves to fuel its domestic economy amid the disruption. That reliance may be short lived.
Analysts say that soon China will boost imports as its domestic industries recover from the war-induced shock, potentially driving up oil prices on the eve of critical U.S. midterm elections for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. China is “the largest importer of oil on the planet,” Peter Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute and author, told Just the News.
Trump crafts win-win for taxpayers as
new immigration fees will self-fund stricter enforcement 2 replies
new immigration fees will self-fund stricter enforcement 2 replies
On Wednesday, the Trump administration gave notice of the start of a sweeping array of new immigration fees, creating a no-lose scenario where the new fees either deter applicants from coming, thus reducing immigration, or they proceed with their application, putting more money into resources to scrutinize claims.
The rollout, triggered by notices under last year's “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed last year, layers fresh costs onto everything from work permits for protection seekers to juvenile immigrant status, directly bankrolling deportation operations while slamming the door on what officials call taxpayer-subsidized loopholes.
According to the latest poll from Insa, the AfD’s support climbed to 29 per cent, up half a percentage point from the previous week. Meanwhile, the governing centre-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) in Bavaria fell by another full point to 20.5 per cent. This means the gap now stands at 8.5 per cent, the largest lead ever recorded by the polling firm for the upstart anti-mass-migration party, Die Welt reported.
Meanwhile, the CDU’s leftist coalition partner, the Social Democrats, improved slightly to just 13 per cent, putting them on par with the Greens and just ahead of Die Linke (The Left),
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Actor Alan Ritchson, star of the Amazon Prime show Reacher, accused President Donald Trump of concealing the Epstein Files while saying that he’s “all up into 13 year olds.”
Ritchson expressed his thoughts during an interview with podcaster Josh Horwitz.
“People, I think, are a little afraid of me because they’re like he’s a loose canon, and I am not. I’m just saying the s*** that everybody should say if they give a s*** about humanity everybody else should feel like I feel about the way things are and the abuses that are happening everywhere,” he said.
It was then that Ritchson expressed outrage over the “the f****** Epstein files.”
Three more subcontractors that worked on the Obama Presidential Center have filed legal claims saying they are owed nearly $900,000, adding to a growing list of payment disputes surrounding the project.
The companies each filed mechanics liens against the Obama Presidential Center property, a routine legal tool used on construction projects to recover unpaid construction costs. The subcontractors claim they are owed money for structural steel, excavation and concrete, and gymnasium flooring work performed on Home Court, the Center's 60,000-square-foot basketball and events facility.
Twenty-five states, with the help of a Department of Homeland Security database, have identified hundreds of thousands of dead people and noncitizens registered to vote, and they haven’t finished counting yet.
So far, just 10 states—including key battlegrounds Georgia and North Carolina—have fully processed the voter data through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.
SAVE is primarily used by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to verify eligibility for government benefits. The Trump administration made it available to states to cross-reference voter registration data.
The socialists are feeling their oats right now.
They think they are on the rise in the face of a weak Democratic Party that seems largely okay with being eaten alive, and already has been largely taken over by radicals.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — the guy with the perpetual smirk — is one piece of evidence of this trend. He apparently thought he could dictate foreign policy and get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested. Then when he found out he doesn't have that kind of power, he had to resort to encouraging leftists to protest.
That has now ticked off the local police,
California’s Medi-Cal crisis has left taxpayers paying for fraud, waste, and abuse.
The Pacific Research Institute released a study this week breaking down how taxpayers are paying for “a program that has grown beyond the state’s ability to effectively manage it.”
The findings come as the Trump administration announced on July 21 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is pausing over $860 million in funding to California after federal officials discovered in-home supportive services claims that significantly exceeded national trends.
Sally Pipes, the institute’s president, told the Daily Signal that rooting out fraud should be lawmakers’ top priority.
“If lawmakers could make only one thing happen this year,
They’re dolling up the trans agenda — and taxpayers are footing the bill.
“First-of-their-kind” transgender dolls — complete with removable genitalia — will debut in some Minnesota classrooms this fall to kids as young as 4 years old. The paper dolls, with gender-neutral names like “Sam,” “Rory,” “Avery” and “Parker,” have removable internal and external genitals, along with more than 100 interchangeable pieces of clothing, accessories and hairstyles — like a trans Mr./Mrs. Potato Head.
In 2023, the New York Times ran an article entitled, “Increasingly, Women Are Running the World’s Great Museums.” Some of the museums mentioned were the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.
But it’s not only museums where women dominate. Other arts and cultural institutions seem to be on a permanent trajectory to hire women as CEOs. On the surface, this shouldn’t be a problem. Qualified women should certainly take their place at the top if they are the best candidates for the job.
But…. There seems to be a troubling common denominator here. The vast majority of the women in these positions fit a certain mold.
Another stunning connection has emerged between Rep. Ilhan Omar’s family and the sprawling Feeding Our Future fraud scandal that robbed American taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars intended to feed needy children.
Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, registered her consulting company at a Minnesota residence connected through business records to several major figures in the Feeding Our Future operation, according to an investigation by The Daily Wire.
Noor founded Grit Partners Consulting, a health and leadership consultancy focused largely on projects in Africa.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Economic Development Corporation admitted this week that his city-owned grocery stores “might not have all the items” you’d find in a typical supermarket.
The five stores — which are expected to cost taxpayers upwards of $70 million — will likely not include hot food counters or butchers, EDC officials revealed during a board meeting Thursday.
“It may not have all the items, but it’s going to be like a typical grocery store,” insisted Jeanny Pak, interim CEO of the EDC, the powerful city-run nonprofit tasked with boosting economic growth and development. Pak also echoed Mamdani’s assertion that only certain items in the stores would be discounted.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, vowed to punish those responsible after a car struck people on the outskirts of Berlin’s Gay Pride celebrations, killing at least one person and wounding 16 others.
The attack on Saturday night forced organisers to cut short one of Europe’s largest Pride events and comes as Germany remains on edge after a series of deadly vehicle and knife attacks in recent years.
Police said those hurt “included several with life-threatening injuries”. They called on everyone to leave the event, one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations, immediately, in a post on X.
Many in Atlanta also celebrate its popularity because it's a successful black-owned business, co-owned by Tamara Young and Chef Virgil Harper. And that's fine; it's a free country, and people are welcome to celebrate what they want and what matters to them. Personally, when I go out to eat, I really only care about things like flavor and service, not the race of the owners. I grew up with parents who never considered someone's skin color a defining factor in who they are or what they're capable of achieving, and I've always followed their lead.
The Odyssey” is taking hits from conservatives, rightly so, for its “woke” casting. Some of director Christopher Nolan’s choices are indeed odd and distracting. (Why does the Bard look like a Rastafarian?)
But it’s leftists who should be even more upset about the people chosen for key roles.
Sure, the movie checks all the diversity boxes, which, according to our friends at Unleash Prosperity, is mandatory if you want your film to be considered for Best Picture in today’s leftist-controlled Hollywood. So, Nolan appeased the left’s diversity gods with a cast that, according to one count, is 50% white, 24% Latino and Hispanic, 12% black, and 9%