OH TO BE IN ENGLAND: We live in Britain’s ‘valley of strangers:’ Inside Muslim-majority northern town where locals say there is ‘no point speaking English’ and others say ‘no one talks to each other.’

Tariq Hussain admits he knew nothing about Keir Starmer’s plans to get tough on immigration, mainly because he’s been preoccupied with more pressing concerns lately.

His day job selling traditional Asian female clothes takes up a lot of his time and business has been slow. And when he gets home, he is on the phone to relatives and friends in Pakistan to check on their safety following recent tensions between the country and neighbouring India, which almost led to war.

But there is another more troubling reason why Mr Hussain was completely oblivious to Sir Keir’s pledge to overhaul a ‘broken’ immigration system, despite the fact that it could directly affect him and his family.

Speaking in his native Punjabi he confessed: ‘I speak little English even though I have been in this country for quite a long time. I don’t watch the British news because I don’t understand it, so what’s the point?

‘All my work involves dealing with other Pakistani people and my friends are all Pakistani so I don’t need to speak English. If I do, I get somebody to help me.’

In March, the London Daily Mail published an interactive Webpage headlined: How many people can’t speak English in YOUR neighbourhood? Interactive map covering England and Wales’s 36,000 districts reveals 43% of residents struggle with the language in one part of the country.

Naturally, this has made some of England’s more, umm, left-leaning and diversity-focused citizens quite cross:

We’ve gone from ‘immigration is our greatest asset’ to ‘we must cover up what is happening or there’ll be a revolution’ https://t.co/oQQCNKtaUP

— Calgie (@christiancalgie) May 18, 2025

SPACE: California firm Rocket Lab launches third satellite for Japanese company.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE — Just Not Your Village:

Listen to the pure scorn and hatred in her voice when she talks about Americans having more children compared to when she discusses illegal aliens having more babies

These people are evil and racist https://t.co/QPZah78I2A

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) May 18, 2025

BURGERS AND FRIES, BEST THINGS FOR YA: Toxic metals found in all rice samples in study.

HARROWING FOOTAGE SHOWS MEXICAN SAILORS CLINGING TO RIGGING FOR DEAR LIFE AFTER BROOKLYN BRIDGE CRASH:

Harrowing video shows Mexican sailors clinging to the rigging of the tall ship that smashed into the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night — after dozens of crew members were seen standing on the masts of the vessel as it careened out of control.

Two sailors were killed and 17 were injured after the ship, Mexican navy training vessel collided with iconic bridge just before 8:30 p.m. Saturday night.

Video taken at the moment of the crash shows dozens of sailors lined up on the 147-foot masts as it set off on its journey for Iceland with 277 on board following a goodwill visit to New York City.

Footage filmed from the Brooklyn side of the East River shows the Cuauhtémoc’s three masts hitting the bridge and snapping after an apparent mechanical failure, sending it drifting in reverse downstream.

Other eyewitness video shows sailors hanging from the rigging ropes on the damaged masts.

“We saw someone dangling, and I couldn’t tell if it was just blurry or my eyes, and we were able to zoom in on our phone and there was someone dangling from the harness from the top for at least 15 minutes before they were able to rescue them,” eyewitness Lily Katz told The Associated Press.

Emergency diving crews were sent in to check the water as a precaution, but remarkably, no one fell in, officials said.

Related:

Countless people ask why, in 2025, any Navy still trains midshipmen on tall ships.

The answer is simple: tall ships teach the fundamentals. No autopilot. No screens. Just wind, rope, canvas and consequences. You learn to respect the sea or it punishes you. You learn attention to… pic.twitter.com/RmWBwFCjx2

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) May 18, 2025

RIP, MICHAEL LEDEEN, 83:

STAY SAFE: AOSU Security Cameras Outdoor Wireless, 2 Cam-Kit, No Subscription. #CommissionEarned

OUT ON A LIMB: David Marcus: Old Man Biden’s autopen pardons should be null and void.

Nice work if you can get it. You see, when the boss was upstairs struggling to get the lid off his tapioca pudding, the White House staff could do anything they wanted, no matter how harebrained, and there were no consequences.

This brings us to the issue of Biden’s pardons, especially those granted to his family and public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Put simply, did Biden have any idea what he was doing when his autopen scratched the surface of those presidential papers?

In the case of the pardon for his son Hunter, Biden is on the record just months earlier saying he would never ever do that. Sure, it’s possible that he was lying, but he did give us his word as a Biden.

If, as Democrats and their media allies insist, Biden’s decline was so swift, starting in 2023, that it caught everyone off guard, then shouldn’t we question whether the Joe Biden who signed Hunter’s pardon wasn’t deeper in the throes of dementia than the one who promised not to?

The worst part of the mendacity from the Biden administration is that all those smarmy spokespeople like Ian Sams and all his bosses knew that the harm they were doing probably could not be undone, even if the actions were born of lies.

They knew that, as a practical matter, it is likely impossible to deport 10 million illegal aliens, and they knew that it would be almost impossible to challenge Biden’s pardons, even if he thought he was signing a pool pass for Corn Pop.

The problem with the current reckoning going on over the lie of the century is that there are few consequences. Journalists aren’t being fired, they are getting rich selling books in which they detail their own incompetence.

And leave out the details of who was actually running the show.

HOW IT STARTED: AOC in 2020: ‘Defunding Police Means Defunding Police.’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said New York City’s proposed $1 billion cut from the police department budget tiptoes around demands from activists who are asking for a reduced police presence.

Though the plan proposed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) cuts one-sixth of the New York Police Department (NYPD) budget, activists note that much of it would be transferred to other city departments, including the Department of Education, where it could pay for police in schools. Activists have advocated for removing officers from schools altogether.

“Defunding police means defunding police,” the congresswoman said in a statement. “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”

—The Hill, June 30th, 2020, at the height of left’s riot, arson, and looting season.

How it’s going: The Fruits of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Labors: A 70% increase in Violent Crime in Her District.

Last year, AOC was hoping to be named to the top spot on the powerful Oversight Committee. Pelosi blocked her ascension,  proving to AOC that moving up in the Democratic Party will be harder than she thought.

Through all of this political maneuvering to further her career, AOC has forgotten the people who got her to where she is: her long-suffering constituents. From 2019 to 2025, murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft have jumped 70%.

You might claim that a congresswoman’s actions or inactions have little to do with the crime rate. That would be true if AOC hadn’t been a prominent voice in the “Defund the Police” movement.

“The 115th Precinct, which also serves part of Roosevelt Avenue in addition to Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, and north Corona, saw major offenses rise by 85%” reports the New York Post.

Ocasio-Cortez’s district takes in two police districts that are among the worst in the city. And some residents are pointing the finger at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“She’s not doing s–t. She doesn’t live in the neighborhood, she doesn’t care,” said Elmhurst resident Guadelupe Alvarez, who has lived in the neighborhood her entire life.

Okay, to be fair she may not live in the neighborhood anymore, but she’s perfectly willing to stop in for a few minutes whenever the New Yorker wants to do a photoshoot about wealthy Manhattan leftists in their digs, such as this month’s unintentionally hilarious “Power Houses: Inside the living rooms of notable New Yorkers.” AOC was photographed knitting in her East Elmhurst apartment to accompany similar photos of Alex Soros and Huma Abedin, AOC, Al Sharpton, and “Ella Emhoff, textile designer.”

More from Rick Moran on AOC at PJ Media today: 

The director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute, Hannah Meyers, said, “Nobody wants to be a police officer, it’s been so villainized.”

“It’s her district, she’s supposed to be looking out for people there,” she added. “She has such a myopic focus on race. You’re not helping the victims of crime by talking about how the system is racist.”

Riots for thee, but not for me, to coin a phrase. At Commentary this month, Michael Woronoff reviews Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance, and spots their passage on the joys of Democratic Party monopoly governance:

In a paragraph that could have been stolen from a Republican campaign consultant, the authors lament:

Liberals should be able to say: vote for us, and we will govern the country the way we govern California! Instead, conservatives are able to say: Vote for them, and they will govern the country the way they govern California! California … has the worst homelessness problem in the country. It has the worst housing affordability problem in the country. It trails only Hawaii and Massachusetts in its cost of living. As a result, it is losing hundreds of thousands of people every year to Texas and Arizona.

Similarly, while Sandy the bartender has had national ambitions from the second she ran for Congress, she’s going to have a hard time pointing to benefits she’s brought to her little corner of the Bronx.

AS NEW JERSEY GOES, SO GOES AOC’S DREAMS: Is the Dems’ Worst Nightmare Coming True?

LET THEM STARVE THEMSELVES: Yale students go on pro-Hamas hunger strike; administrators refuse meeting.

WELL, THAT’S JUST ANOTHER LIE: Harvard president rejects ‘partisan’ label in letter to Sec. McMahon amid clash with Trump admin. Of course Harvard is partisan. Watch what they do. And heck, listen to what they say when they’re not being investigated for partisanship.

THIS IS THE QUESTION THEY DON’T WANT ANSWERED. OR EVEN ASKED.

We don’t need @jaketapper or anyone else to tell us Biden has been increasingly senile since the 2020 election. We need them to tell us who was actually running the federal government from 2020-2024 and how they did it. You’re not coming clean until you come clean about that.

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 17, 2025

THE DANES ARE FINALLY GOING NUCLEAR: They have to because of all their renewables. “Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump in Riyadh: A Rejection of the Globalist Gospel: Trump’s Riyadh speech rejected nation-building and globalist dogma, marking him as a bold champion of sovereignty over interventionism.

Quoth Trump: “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”

There’s no particular reason to think that they even understand what makes their own societies work.

CHANGE: FDA Makes Big Announcement On Fluoride: “When it comes to children, we should err on the side of safety.”

SALENA ZITO: ‘People You Should Know’ Is a Love Letter to Bottom-Up Solutions.

JAZZ MUSICIAN FINDS OUT: Prof who called Jewish Temples “Synagogues of Satan” Has Been Fired.

He says he’s a victim of anti-semitism.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Piers Morgan Asks Left-Wing Feminist To Define What A Woman Is. It Does Not Go Well.

LIGHTNING DEAL: Under Cabinet Lights, 63 LED Rechargeable Battery Operated Motion Sensor Light Indoor, 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned

MARK JUDGE: Jake Tapper Is Why We Can’t Quit Stephen Glass. “This is why, even decades after the fact, Stephen Glass remains such a compelling journalistic figure and a totem rather than a villain for liberal journalists. They have adopted Glass’s strategy of lying to cover lies and then adding lies, except unlike Glass they – with good reason – think they can now get away with it. Their colleagues will protect them.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? German chancellor vows to build Europe’s strongest army.

JOSH HAMMER: End the ‘Nationwide’ Injunction Racket Once and for All.

ALEX BERENSON: Why we need to humiliate Joe Biden. “Exposing his cognitive decline may seem cruel. He’s a sad old man. But it’s necessary; it’s the best way to keep other similarly addled sad old men from clinging to power at all costs.”

True, but even more important to humiliate — or worse — the people who enabled him and covered up his decline in order to exercise unearned power.

HOUSTON, WE’VE HAD A PROBLEM:  Ed Smylie, a hero of the Apollo 13 mission, died three weeks ago at the age of 95.  He headed the team of engineers that came up with a way to save the lives of astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise.  The news has only made it into the major media in the last day or two.

Here’s what happened (in case you don’t remember the event and didn’t see the 1995 movie):  An oxygen tank exploded, forcing the astronauts to retreat from the command module to the lunar module.  But air in the lunar module was designed to handle only two men, not three.  NASA estimated that, after two days, the build-up of carbon dioxide would render the air poisonous.  Something had to be done fast.

Both the lunar and the command modules were equipped with canisters of lithium hydroxide to cleanse the air of excess carbon dioxide.  If the astronauts could just use the canisters from the command module to supplement the lunar module’s canisters the problem would be solved.  But … not so fast.  The canisters in the two modules were different from each other.   “You can’t put a square peg in a round hole, and that’s what we had,” said Smylie.   Before the canisters could be used, the engineers had to design an adaptor out of the materials available onboard.   They were able to do so, using cardboard, plastic bags, a hose from a space suit, and duct tape.   Duct tape!!!  (As Smylie later put it, “If you’re a Southern boy, if it moves and it’s not supposed to, you use duct tape.”)

Mission accomplished.  The astronauts returned safely to Earth.  God bless Ed Smylie and his engineers.