What do you do most mornings at 2:17 a.m.?

Safe to say, I am almost always sound asleep in deep darkness and brisk mountain air.

But nights are quite a bit different for the current commander in chief and leader of the free world. //

Four to five hours of sleep a night is said to be the norm for the 78-year-old Trump. And his doctor says Trump handles such little sleep quite well.

This is ridiculous.

The non-stop No. 47 president has now been caught doing game-film study in the wee hours of the morning. He was watching reruns of the day's political events on C-SPAN. In the middle of the night. It's true.

The world discovered this by accident.

During last week's Cabinet meeting in the White House, Trump was overheard telling U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that he had watched his testimony to Congress. And that he had come across it two nights in a row.

Well, actually, two very early mornings in a row.

"You were on every night, at 3 o’clock in the morning!” the president said, sounding impressed. //

For a very long time, almost from its beginning 46 years ago last month, I have regarded nonprofit C-SPAN as a national treasure, especially since I am an admitted political junkie. And someone who was often writing for work about events that the network carried without advertising or pontificating.

It's as if the network thinks that, given access to events and facts free of shading, Americans can think for themselves. //

C-SPAN's video archives and transcripts now contain almost 300,000 hours of its event coverage from today, yesterday, last weekend, and all the way back comprehensively to 1987.

The archives are even searchable.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has sent a criminal referral to the DOJ, accusing James of mortgage fraud. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director Bill Pulte says James appears to have falsified records in order to meet certain lending requirements and receive favorable loan terms. He cited a property in Virginia, that she has allegedly claimed as her principal residence and a property in New York that she claimed as a four-unit structure...instead of a five, which Pulte says means she was able to get a different type and more favorable loan. //

Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
·
Follow
...The referral also claims that James listed her father as her husband and represented a five-unit dwelling as a four-unit dwelling to allegedly secure an advantage on loans...
7:27 PM · Apr 15, 2025. //

Senator Chris Van Hollen

@ChrisVanHollen
·
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I've been clear: if President Bukele doesn't want to meet here in D.C., then I intend to go to El Salvador this week to check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's condition and discuss his release.

Kilmar was illegally ABDUCTED and deported by the Trump Admin. He must be brought home NOW.

9:59 PM · Apr 14, 2025. //

For comparison, Van Hollen never showed one-tenth this amount of energy when Rachel Morin, one of his constituents, was murdered by an illegal alien in 2023. Let a Salvadoran be sent back to El Salvador, though, and he's ready to board an international flight and beat down someone's door.

The senator wasn't the only one with that idea, though. As I type this, House Democrats are organizing a congressional delegation to go to the Central American nation. Oh yeah, and you get to pay for it. //

What exactly is the end goal here? Kilmar Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. The United States has no mechanism by which to somehow return him to Maryland to resume his position as an illegal immigrant. Further, El Salvador's president has already said he won't facilitate that. Democrats going down there and shouting for the cameras isn't going to change that.

All of this is just so stupid. Where was this outrage when 13 American service members were murdered due to the Biden administration's rank incompetence and politicization of the Afghanistan withdrawal? Where was this outrage when Laken Riley was murdered in cold blood? But let an illegal immigrant be deported to his country of origin, and they are ready to invade El Salvador over it, and I'm not sure I mean that figuratively. //

JGS772
14 hours ago
So in El Salvador Bukele does something very simple, he denies entry to these clowns. Picture this, they fly down to El Salvador (actually the city of San Salvador) and get off the plane and go to customs and when they get there the customs official tells them that their entry is denied. What do they do then? Try to go through customs anyway and get arrested? Maybe Bukele puts them in the same prison as as Abrego Garcia?

It would make for terrific theater!

We have recently heard much about the Fourteenth Amendment with regard to “birthright citizenship.”. //

This language actually further limits and restricts what the federal government can do to us in the writing of its laws. This is where the “Equal Protection” really kicks in: “(N)or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Proper application of the 14th Amendment? Means a whole lot of laws are unconstitutional.

Progressive tax law? Or any tax law other than a true flat tax? Is unconstitutional. To pass one law with multiple tax rates? Or tax law that has crony tax breaks to which only some citizens have access? Is denial of many millions of Americans’ “equal protection of the laws.”

Nigh everything the Feds do is predicated upon punishing enemies and rewarding friends. Laws for thee — but not for me. Or vice versa. None of this is constitutional — per the 14th.

Think of the massive disempowerment of the federal government the correct application of the 14th would provide.

Think of the massive equalization of opportunities the end of anti-14th cronyism would deliver. //

The Big Cronies’ government advantages mean greater success. Which means they can better afford even more cronyism. Which means even greater success. Which means…. Lather, rinse, repeat.…. //

Cronyism isn’t picking winners and losers. It’s picking losers at the expense of winners.

The losers end up looking like winners because they are being propped up and propelled forward by the cronyism. It’s government force-feeding us bad ideas. Which deprives us of better ideas. Because they are overrun by the lesser, cronyism-fueled bad ideas.

See: Fake energy. Solar and wind are terrible. But they look “viable” because of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Big Gov cronyism shoving them down our throats. //

See also: The bank sector. Which is as rife with cronyism as any sector in the US.

You know what happened to your disappeared neighborhood bank? That had been in your community for decades? Big Gov cronyism killed it.

The Big Banks dominate. They received tens of trillions of dollars in government money after they helped destroy the global economy in 2008. Not letting that serious crisis go to waste? Big Gov let the Big Banks write the Dodd-Frank law that further institutionalized their cronyism.

Thousands of neighborhood banks have been murdered as a result. Which the Big Banks then buy on the cheap. Which further solidifies their Bigness. Which….

Piers Morgan:

All right, what if I was a young student at Columbia, there on a green card, British, come in, happy to be here, doing my paperwork, get to Columbia, and I start leading a group which is a bunch of white supremacists, and we start terrorizing black students in the way that they are terrorizing Jewish students.

In that circumstance, would we all be as comfortable with this? Or is it the reality, which was exposed by the mobs at Columbia, which is that for some reason, Jews get treated differently to anybody else when it comes to this kind of thing?

Because if that had been, honestly, white supremacists treating black students like that, they would be out of the country in 10 minutes. In 10 minutes.

[...]

What about if he had said all of this at his green card interview? Would he have got a green card? No. If he said, 'I support a prescribed terror group in the United States,' you're not coming in on a green card.

All Marco Rubio is doing, it seems to me, is taking it back to that scenario and saying, 'Well, if you'd been honest, then' - and, by the way, he was dishonest on his green card application about other stuff, which is another part of the equation, which might in itself disqualify him from staying in the country.

But the idea that he would have said, 'I support Hamas. I support a global intifada. I support the destruction of Western civilization. Now give me a green card to come and live in America.' F*** off!

President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum aimed at stopping illegal aliens and other ineligible people from obtaining Social Security Act benefits.

Southside Judge Smails
a day ago
I didn't know any of that...any specific books recommended?

anon-y2mh Southside
a day ago edited
Probably the biggest one I can think of off the top of my head was "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange.

However, something to think about - the USN actually wargamed an attack where the US had 24 hours warning. Pacific Fleet was able to sortie, and they met Kido Butai some four or five hundred miles north of Pearl Harbor.

Where they proceeded to get their asses kicked (it hurts to say, but I say that as a veteran myself - call Pearl Harbor what it was) as badly as they did in real life. There were only 2 carriers available in PacFlt at that point. One was off delivering aircraft to someplace (Midway, I believe). Don't remember where the other was, but they were not in any shape at all to contribute to a battle with 6 Japanese carriers.

The gotcha was where they were. In the real world, Pearl Harbor was only something like 60 - 100 ft. deep. The Navy was able to salvage and patch many of the ships initially sunk or mangled. Had they met the Japanese navy 500 miles northwest of Pearl, they would have been in multi-thousand foot deep water. Any ship lost there would have been lost permanently.

The point is that Pearl Harbor has on several occasions been called the most "successful defeat" in USN history. Had they been warned, the death toll would have been higher and the permanent destruction of PacFlt (minus the two carriers) would most likely been almost total.

anon-y2mh Mrs. deWinter
2 hours ago edited
Hat tip!

First, I owe Mrs. deWinter and mopani an apology. When I wrote my original post, I had a false memory and used an incorrect number. There were 3 carriers (not 2) in PacFlt's order of battle. The carriers were Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga. Enterprise was returning from a mission to send a Marine fighter squadron to Wake Island. On the morning of 7 December, the task force was about 215 miles west of Oahu. Lexington and her task force was returning from a similar mission to Midway, and was, on the morning of 7 December, 500 miles southeast of Midway. She alone, of the 3 carries, was in a position to do something about Kido Butai. However, the smart money would have been a direct order to her commander telling him to run for it. There was no way on the face of this planet that Lexington was in a fit state to go up, effectively by herself, against any two of the 6 Japanese carriers present. Had she attempted to do so, she would almost definitely been sunk, losing a significant number of her sailors.

The third carrier (the one I'd forgotten about because she wasn't present in theater that morning) was Saratoga who was just pulling into San Diego when the attack started in Hawaii.

One other thing I touched on but didn't really go into depth on was the death/injury toll. Of the 8 battleships present in Pearl Harbor that morning, 5 were either sunk outright or damaged badly enough that they would be expected to sink had that damage occurred in deeper waters.

Of those 5 battleships, only two (Arizona and Oklahoma) were completely written off. The remaining three (Nevada, California, and West Virginia) were ultimately moved to Puget Sound, WA for repairs and refit.

Being the only ship to successfully get underway, Nevada was hit by at least one torpedo and 6 bombs, forcing her crew to turn out of the channel and beach her near the mouth of the harbor (had she sunk in the mouth of Pearl Harbor, the harbor would have been utterly useless until she was cleared out of the way). After repairs, Nevada, was used for convoy duty in the Atlantic and provided fire support for 5 landings (Attu, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa).

California was hit by two torpedoes and a bomb. However one of the hits started a fire which disabled part of the electrical system that powered the pumps. So she slowly sank over the next 3 days. After she was refloated and repaired, she took part in the Battle of Suriago Straight, she was hit by a kamikaze during the invasion of Lyangen Gulf. Following repairs, she was again present and providing fire support during the invasion of Okinawa.

West Virginia sank after multiple torpedo hits. After being refloated and repaired, she was sent to support the invasion of the Phillipines (Gen. MacArthur and his "I Have Returned" moment), taking part in the Battle of Suriago Straight, as well as the battles of Lyangen Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

So I think it's safe to say that those three ships materially contributed to the success of the war effort, and none would have been available had they been sunk 400 miles northwest of Oahu.

Now the men are something different. There were 2,008 sailors killed and 710 wounded during the attack, with roughly half of the fatalities coming from the explosion on board Arizona. We can probably deduct the Army/Army Air Corps casualties (218 killed, 364 wounded) from the totals, as the Army Air Corps couldn't have been present due to range from Pearl Harbor. The Marines would still have suffered some fatalities, but it would come down to whether or not they were deployed on the ships or if they were shore Marines at the time.

Let's start with keeping the Marines out of it, and deducting the Army/AAC totals from the Navy. That would leave us with a floor of 1790 killed and 646 wounded.

This is where it gets really sketchy to determine what a reasonable total should be. If we determine that California, Nevada, and West Virginia were total losses (with only California sinking slowly enough to get more than a tithe of her men off), we'd be looking at 778 casualties from Nevada and 1157 casualties from from West Virginia, assuming that they sank in a similar way in this universe as they did in ours. In our world, West Virginia lost 106 killed and Nevada lost 60 killed and 109 wounded. So, if you take the C-A-T =DOG numbers that we came up with above, my back-of-the-napkin arithmetic raises the casualties from 2043 killed and 1178 wounded to something on the close order of 3450 killed and 646 wounded (the numbers I have access to don't easily differentiate between wounded and killed, so I've been kind of lumping everything into the killed basket).

And this is, frankly, almost more important than saving 3 ships for battle later. Our back of the envelope estimate says we'd lose 1400 or so more trained sailors. And from a human perspective, we'd lose another 1400 or so brothers, sons, and fathers. In Pearl Harbor, these men were able to frequently self-rescue by crawling to other ships via mooring lines. They were close enough to shore that, assuming that they could dodge the burning oil slicks, they stood a passable chance of getting to dry ground. In the middle of the Pacific, they'd have to take their chances that someone would be around to rescue them, as they would be in no position to rescue themselves.

So, yeah. I'll freely admit that the above was a bunch of back-of-the-napkin arithmetic held together by more wild guesses that I should have used, but it kind of puts things in perspective.

Let's review the bidding. Biden creates a facially illegal and purely discretionary program. He brings in a half-million Third World illegals who are, according to the definition of the program, "inadmissible or otherwise ineligible for admission." President Trump, supported by the secretary of homeland security, orders an end to the program and jumps through the administrative hoops of using a Federal Register announcement to reverse Biden's purely discretionary program and a Deep State, or Deep State-adjacent federal judge says he can't and requires an individual interview to end the paroles, which is not required by law, when they never received the legally require individual parole.

This is not new. Barack Obama created the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program (DACA or Dreamers) out of whole cloth. It is simply a scheme whereby the federal government covers its eyes and pretends these people don't exist. This program was not created by executive order, law, or administrative rulemaking. Nope. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a freakin memo directing that "prosecutorial discretion" be exercised. However, when Jeff Sessions got around to pulling the plug on DACA, lawfare ensued, and the administration was told it could not rescind the Napolitano memo.

Just stop for a moment and consider this. Federal courts literally told the Trump administration that they could not rescind a memo written five years and three Homeland Security secretaries earlier. Logically, this means a cabinet secretary’s memo is more powerful than an actual law because it takes no consensus to issue it, and it can’t be withdrawn when management changes. To make matters worse, the Roberts Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the logically ridiculous notion that the whim of a Democrat president has the same standing, in terms of permanence, as the Constitution.

We clearly have a two-tiered justice system. Not only do BLM rioters get a pass while pro-life grannies go to jail for demonstrating peacefully outside an abortion center, the president himself has his decision treated with derision by the federal courts while all manner of Democrat humbug receives the adulation of our black-robed overseers. //

houdini1984
3 hours ago
The Supreme Court has become the problem. By refusing to keep the judicial branch in its own lane, the Roberts Court has greenlit a nationwide judicial coup against our elected representatives, including the President. The Founders never intended to create a nation that was subject to judicial tyranny of this kind.

The only solution is for the elected branches to push back decisively, soundly rejecting all judicial decisions that interfere with or run contrary to constitutionally-established congressional and presidential powers. Unfortunately, Democrats will block and congressional attempts to rein in these rogue judges, which means that it's up to executive to restore our constitutional order.

The President has taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. If that requires him to defend it against one of the other branches, so be it.

Dieter Schultz houdini1984
3 hours ago
The Supreme Court has become the problem. By refusing to keep the judicial branch in its own lane, the Roberts Court has greenlit a nationwide judicial coup against our elected representatives, including the President.
Oh, if it were only that simple.

IMHO, it is not just the SC that is the problem, all of the branches of the federal government are confused and conflicted. Congress sets up independent departments and functions in the executive branch and puts language in the law prohibiting the President from removing them. Then, the executive branch makes rules, and binding rulings, that look, and are, a lot like lawmaking and the judiciary, respectively.

Today the most pressing problem is the judiciary and it being out of control but the problem is bigger than that and requires something more than just the SC doing its job.

Although, right now I'd settle for the SCOTUS actually doing its job.

houdini1984 Dieter Schultz
2 hours ago
Admittedly, our entire constitutional order is out of whack, but we have to start somewhere if we want to get things back on track. The problem is that too many on the right are sitting around waiting and hoping for SCOTUS to do the right thing. That's not going to happen with Roberts at the helm, since he's more concerned with protecting the Court than safeguarding the country.

Meanwhile, Congress is completely broken. They can't even do their job and complete a budget. Every year, they wait until the last minute and push some stupid continuing resolution at us while threatening a shutdown. The Dems have been waging war against normalcy for decades, and the Republicans are too disunited to mount any effective opposition.

Sadly, it's up to the Executive to stand against this nonsense and try to restore sense and order to the nation. The only good news here is that this administration seems to understand that the administrative state needs to be rolled back, so maybe that will mute some of your concerns about executive rulings, rules, and pseudo-lawmaking.

Hope is a terrible strategy, but it appears to be all we have at this point. //

houdini1984 Scholar
30 minutes ago
Just so. If I were Trump, I would assemble some of my most plain-spoken cabinet members and organize an instructional speech to the nation. We would explain, in simple words, exactly how our government has become so off-track, and the steps needed to put things back in order. Explain how this current dysfunction directly affects their lives, and the benefits they'll enjoy from a restoration of constitutional governance.

Oh, and make a point to talk about the people who support the current misrule, and the corrupt benefits they enjoy from corrupting our constitutional system. Then challenge Democrats to join us in fixing these problems -- while making it clear that we won't allow their anti-American revolution to do any further damage to the American people. //

mopani houdini1984
9 minutes ago edited
What it is going to take is years of push back and work by the executive branch, including making regular updates to the people.

There is no easy solution, and any quick fix will be quickly broken.

Buckle up, any victory worth having is worth fighting for.

I thank God we have a chief executive who understands this and is willing to wage the war. But he has got to take it to the people when frequent special addresses and pressure Congress to make his executive orders into law.

1. Connect the Kindle Paperwhite to a computer USB-cable.
2. Create an empty file in the root directory DO_FACTORY_RESTORE (This need to be just a file without any extension). Follow steps below to show and remove an extension, if it is hidden
3. In Windows Explorer, choose Tools > Folder Options.
4. Click the View tab in the Folder Options dialog box.
5. In Advanced Settings, select Show Hidden Files and Folders.
6. Deselect Hide Extensions for Known File Types.
7. Click OK.
8. Safely disconnect the reader from your computer. Do this by selecting USB in your taskbar and clicking Kindle under "Safely remove the device". You can keep it connected physically if you want. 
9. Reboot your device by holding the power button (about 40 seconds).

It will take you thru setup steps and re-register as you would have done the first time.

Many in the crowd that cheered Jesus’ entry on Palm Sunday mistook his mission as one to eradicate their political rulers, rather than to eradicate the sin in their own hearts. Two thousand years later, you can find the same mistake in the pages of The New York Times.

In a Sunday op-ed, the recently resigned Episcopal Rev. Andrew Thayer argues that “Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession.” Jesus, he says, was killed for threatening the power of the Roman Empire, an empire with which Thayer draws explicit parallels to the United States under President Donald Trump and “Christian nationalism,” whatever that means.

He says Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem was an act of “political confrontation.” Jesus, in Thayer’s telling, “came to dismantle the very logic of Caesar: the belief that might makes right, peace comes through violence and politics is best wielded through fear, coercion and control.”

“Dismantling” political empires is, obviously, not why Jesus came to Earth and allowed Himself to be crucified. As any of the children I’ve taught in Sunday school could tell you, He came to take the punishment for our sins so we sinners could be reunited with God by His grace.

Jesus was not protesting Caesar, of whom he had said days before, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” When He was arrested, His reply was, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?” When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what His crime had been, Jesus responded, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest.”

What we have to always do, regardless of who we voted for — you still gotta pay your rent, you still gotta take care of your kids, you still gotta take care of your business — and maybe some of what's happening, like they're trying to take apart the Department of Education, maybe that is a good thing.

Maybe it will force us to make sure that out kids actually get what they need. Maybe it'll force us to go to our state and say 'Listen, I want to make sure, since you've taken all this money from my taxes, I want to make sure that my kids get exactly what they need.' I don't have to wait for the government to do it. We can do it.

This is now in our hands. And it's gonna be tough. Nobody wants to do it, because it's a b****. But you know what? If it comes down to your survival, this is what you gotta do. You gotta take care of what you gotta take care of.

Goldberg then looked off-set, and abruptly said: "And they're telling me that we're gonna be right back."

Needless to say, you could have heard a pin drop while Whoopi told the truth about the state of public education in America. And the dour look on Sunny Hostin's face? Laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Just as good, ABC cutting off the segment with a commercial break. Why that decision was made, we'll likely never know. But do know that based on the reaction of the others on the panel and studio audience, the shocking reaction to Whoopi's comments was palpable. //

stickdude90 an hour ago

Talk about a blind squirrel wearing a broken watch... //

Avatar
TheAmerican1 an hour ago

It's almost as if she's advocating that parents have -- what's that word? It's on the tip of my tongue -- a, um, gosh, what is it?

Oh, I know! A choice in their child's education. //

Curmudgeon99 TheAmerican1 27 minutes ago

She made the argument that things being handled as close to the voters as possible is best. I don't think her big govt. loving friends are going to be forgiving toward her for this.

 Where would our nation be without men like this? When the attack came, they performed. It was a deadly dangerous business. So many of these men saw friends maimed and killed. Even the survivors bore scars, some within, some without. But they recovered from the attack and went on to flood in increasing numbers across the Pacific, and they won. It's hard to imagine what may have happened if they hadn't, but they did. Vaughn P. Drake Jr., from what we read of his life, made no great deal of his service. Many of his peers did likewise. There was a job to do, they did it, and then they went home and got their lives back. They are heroes nonetheless, and now there is one fewer hero in our world. //

Mr. Drake will be laid to rest in Winchester Cemetary in Winchester, Kentucky, with full military honors, as he deserves. There are now only 15 confirmed survivors of the December 7th, 1941 attack.

To Vaughn P. Drake Jr.'s family, I can only say this: All of America is proud of Mr. Drake; we, as a nation, are richer for the existence of men such as he. Indeed, without men like him, we might very well not have a nation at all. //

7againstthebes
21 hours ago
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. GB Shaw

The above characterizes that entire generation of people. Men that were willing to absorb punishment in order to close with their enemy and dish out punishment of their own. Men and women that did the job and came home and made their life happen. Made society happen. Made new industry happen. People that brought about a new era of prosperity to this country.

They never whined about the hardships. They just worked to make everything better.

Judge Smails
19 hours ago
Read a book sometime ago about this subject. It would appear to me that adequate intelligence was not being passed from DC to Pearl regarding Japan. Still, that radar system that was operational did what it was suppose to do and painted the massive amount of aircraft in formation (over 300), far larger than those three unarmed B-17s. The soldier watching it phoned the duty officer and was told "not to worry about it." Outrageous. We knew an attack was coming, but not where. Could have been the Philippines, Singapore or Thailand. No one thought Pearl was in jeopardy for some reason. Astonishing.

Air patrols should have been up looking west through north. It would have been easy to spot over 300 aircraft in formation as they closed on the north coast of Hawaii. Two days before, Japan told all its embassies to destroy their sensitive material. DC knew this. Tragic, horrible day.

anon-y2mh Southside
16 hours ago edited
Probably the biggest one I can think of off the top of my head was "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange.

However, something to think about - the USN actually wargamed an attack where the US had 24 hours warning. Pacific Fleet was able to sortie, and they met Kido Butai some four or five hundred miles north of Pearl Harbor.

Where they proceeded to get their asses kicked (it hurts to say, but I say that as a veteran myself - call Pearl Harbor what it was) as badly as they did in real life. There were only 2 carriers available in PacFlt at that point. One was off delivering aircraft to someplace (Midway, I believe). Don't remember where the other was, but they were not in any shape at all to contribute to a battle with 6 Japanese carriers.

The gotcha was where they were. In the real world, Pearl Harbor was only something like 60 - 100 ft. deep. The Navy was able to salvage and patch many of the ships initially sunk or mangled. Had they met the Japanese navy 500 miles northwest of Pearl, they would have been in multi-thousand foot deep water. Any ship lost there would have been lost permanently.

The point is that Pearl Harbor has on several occasions been called the most "successful defeat" in USN history. Had they been warned, the death toll would have been higher and the permanent destruction of PacFlt (minus the two carriers) would most likely been almost total.

Jeff Bezos's "Blue Origin" rockets are, in my opinion, something that could and should be an absolute banger of a space project. The idea that we could have some billionaire creating rockets for the express purpose of ferrying civilians into the black is something I actually think is needed.

Normalizing space travel, even if in the mind, is something we should definitely be promoting in the zeitgeist.

But then, as Bonchie wrote on Monday, Blue Origin created a PR stunt that was so stupid, I'm surprised no one stopped to think about the negatives for even a few minutes. //

Bezos's rich, leftist, elitist friends are probably not feeling him too deeply right now, and he needed to make it clear that he was still with the agenda by launching the "all-female crew" and making history for women. //

Putting on something so ridiculous as a clear PR stunt that ended up being so cringe-worthy and stupid that it's being widely and roundly mocked sets things back a bit in the minds of the public. Bezos could have put anyone in that rocket including scientists, astronomers, hell, even a regular family who never would have dreamed something like this could happen to them.

Instead, we get self-absorbed celebrities who just chose to use it as a platform to virtue signal, making this all worse. I can't see how this endears space travel to anyone. //

This gets even more infuriating when you look at SpaceX, which utilizes its ever-advancing rocket tech to actually move humanity forward in a way that moves us forward. The spectacle of SpaceX isn't in celebrities, it's getting the job done. It's making science fiction a reality. SpaceX literally rescues astronauts stranded in space.

It's a company that is advancing itself with the clear intent of advancing humanity.

Blue Origin feels like a vanity project meant to elevate one man.

This all-female crew wasn't even a crew. These women were just pawns dressed as explorers, form-fitting suits that accentuated their figures in all the right places.

Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not mad that this flight didn't contain any scientific research or exploration. Civilians going up and coming back down is actually a fantastic idea that I think could really get people excited about the prospect of seeing the stars just a little bit closer.

But this just felt like a stupid virtue signal meant to make one man look good to people who are, frankly, regressive in their views and contribute little to nothing to our society. To do all this with a technology that already is being eyed by a chunk of the public as wasteful and selfish is, in my opinion, irresponsible.

anon-bjec
2 hours ago

Let those peasants in the United States wail

This is how they see us, and why wouldn't they after the embarrassing displays the left has made in recent years. They own(ed) Xiden. Then Yellin made trips over there bowing and scraping submissively before even the lowest level party members. Lots of examples.

President Trump, they will find, is far different. //

SSN674 Donner’s Party
39 minutes ago
For the Chinese government to dump large amounts of U.S. Treasury bonds, they would likely have to sell those bonds in exchange for U.S. dollars, which they would then convert into Chinese yuan. However, this process increases the supply of dollars and raises demand for the yuan in the foreign exchange market, which puts upward pressure on the value of the yuan relative to the dollar. A stronger yuan makes Chinese exports more expensive and less competitive globally, which is the opposite of what China typically wants to achieve. To counteract this effect and maintain the competitiveness of its export-driven economy, China would have to take steps to devalue its own currency—such as loosening monetary policy or intervening directly in currency markets. So paradoxically, by trying to offload U.S. bonds, China risks hurting its own economy by pushing up the value of its currency unless it takes simultaneous measures to weaken it again.

Harvard University @Harvard
·
The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.
harvard.edu
Research Funding
1:07 PM · Apr 14, 2025 //

Team Trump was not amused:

"Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws," the task force said. "The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable.

"It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support," the statement continued. "The Joint Task Force to combat anti-Semitism is announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60M in multi-year contract value to Harvard University." //

Hillsdale College @Hillsdale
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There is another way:

Refuse taxpayer money. //

I've been reporting on similar stories in recent months, and one thing has struck me: the unbelievable amount of federal dollars that are poured annually into these institutions. Harvard has an endowment of—sit down for this—$52 billion. You wouldn’t think they’d need much help now, would you? Yet they’re the beneficiary of nearly $9 billion in multi-year federal grants and contracts. For DOGE's next trick, I would encourage them to find out where the heck that massive pile of money is going (not only at Harvard but at many other schools as well). //

Quiverfull
4 hours ago edited
Hillsdale, FTW. Literally the finest college in the country. Founded as an abolitionist school in 1844, never took a penny of government money, kids are wicked smart, most love the Lord, and they stand alone against government oppression. For instance, their stance on Covid (seems so long ago....) was epic and fearless.

I hate to do it, Bill, but I’ve got to correct you on every single thing that you said 'cause it was all wrong. First, we won the Supreme Court case clearly, 9-0. A district court judge said, unconscionably, that the president and his administration have to go into El Salvador and extradite one of their citizens, an El Salvadorian citizen - so that would be kidnapping - that we have to kidnap an El Salvadorian citizen against the will of his government and fly him back to America, which would be an unimaginable act and an invasion of El Salvador's sovereignty. So we appealed to the Supreme Court, and it said - clearly, no district court can compel the president to exercise his Article II foreign powers … In 2019, he was ordered deported. He has a final removal order from the United States. These are things that no one disputes. Where is he from? El Salvador. Where is he a resident and citizen of? El Salvador. Is he here illegally? Yes. Does he have a deportation order? Yes. A DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing incorrectly that this was a mistaken removal. It was not. This was the right person sent to the right place.

The millionaires behind TLR support reforms that prevent you from suing them, but they’re all too eager to undermine reforms that stop them from suing you. Their efforts to gut the TCPA should be no less shocking than if PETA were caught selling fur coats.

The TCPA protects Texans across the ideological spectrum, from grassroots activists to government watchdogs to on-line reviewers. Weakening the TCPA would embolden litigious corporations, political operatives, and deep-pocketed individuals to use the courts as a cudgel against their opponents. The impact would be devastating not just for those sued, but for the fundamental principles of free speech and open debate in Texas.

It’s unfortunate that tort reform advocates now want to gut one of Texas’ most successful tort reform laws. Their disdain for expensive litigation disappears when they’re the ones filing the lawsuits. Texans should reject these disingenuous, self-serving attacks and tell their lawmakers to leave the TCPA alone, ensuring that all of us—whether pro-life advocates, journalists, or everyday citizens—can continue speaking truth to power without fear of retaliation. //

anon-ymous99
an hour ago
The reddest states have the bluest Republican legislatures. Never ceases to amaze me.

Leitmotif anon-ymous99
6 minutes ago
Actually, it's quite logical - in a perverse sense.

When Republicans dominate the political life of a given state, the grifters, hacks, and opportunists who would otherwise naturally gravitate to the Democrat party join (unfortunately!) the Republican party instead. This phenomenon, in fact, is one on main factors to consider when reflecting upon that salient question that has haunted so many of us - "Where DO, exactly, all these RINOs come from?"

In February, Georgia's heartbeat law, which restricts abortion after a discernable heartbeat is detected (around six weeks) except in the cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, was once again upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court in a 6-1 decision. //

But for a faction of life advocates known as "abortion abolitionists," so-called heartbeat bills do not stop abortions from happening. Their aim is to change this, making it illegal to have one. In March, State Rep. Emory Dunahoo (R-31) introduced House Bill 441 (HB 441), the "Georgia Prenatal Equal Protection Act," which would make abortion a criminal act. If made law, it would remove the six-week timeframe of the heartbeat law and the exceptions that go along with it.

HB 441 was crafted by the Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA), a non-profit, which, according to its X bio, seeks to "exalt and vindicate the image of God by promoting sound public policy that provides equal protection under the law to all preborn human beings."

Since the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, there has been a concerted pushing of the envelope on fetal personhood. Like the Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park, who tested the electrified fence in order to find the weakness, abortion abolitionists like FAA are seeking to make fetal personhood not just a thing but established law; and the only way to do this is to keep challenging the legislative fences. //

FAA, as do most abortion abolitionist groups, rejects the premise of pro-life incrementalism in favor of immediatism. They also do not consider the established pro-life cause merely inept but wholly corrupt. They view these long-established organizations and veterans of the movement as part of the problem. In testimony in support of HB 441, this was expressed by Louisiana Pastor and abolitionist Brian Gunter.

The Supreme Court’s continuing failure to define lower courts’ authority is wreaking havoc on the reputation of the courts — and our constitutional order. //

The Supreme Court has interceded six times in less than three months to rein in federal judges who improperly exceeded their Article III authority and infringed on the Article II authority of President Donald Trump. Yet the high court continues to issue mealy-mouthed opinions which serve only to exacerbate the ongoing battle between the Executive and Judicial branches of government. And now there is a constitutional crisis primed to explode this week in a federal court in Maryland over the removal of an El Salvadoran — courtesy of the justices’ latest baby-splitting foray on Thursday. //

Yet, those requests, as the Trump Administration pointed out yesterday in its response brief, directly infringe on the president’s Article II authority. “The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” the Trump Administration wrote. Rather, “[t]hat is the ‘exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”

While the Supreme Court has declared that “[s]uch power is ‘conclusive and preclusive,’ and beyond the reach of the federal courts’ equitable authority,” given her orders to date, Judge Xinis is unlikely to stand down. Rather, expect the Obama appointee to enter another scathing order demanding details and actions. But with its core executive powers at stake, the Trump Administration cannot comply.

The justices should have foreseen this standoff and defused the situation last week by clearly defining the limits of the lower court’s authority. The Supreme Court’s continuing failure to do so is wreaking havoc on the reputation of the courts — and our constitutional order.