NO KINGS? HOW ABOUT A SHAH INSTEAD?Pahlavi Calls on Iranians to ‘Reclaim Iran.’
June 18, 2025
I USED TO BE DEPRESSED BUT NOW I JUST WONDER WHY MY MOP IS TALKING TO ME: Psychedelics may help cancer patients with depression.
MICHAEL WALSH: In Praise of Instability.
JOHN ONDRASIK: My 2001 Hit Song, ‘Superman,’ Is for the Hostages in Gaza.
When I first released “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” in April 2001, I couldn’t have imagined it would become an anthem for first responders, men and women in uniform, and the broken everyday people working to heal our country. My song struck a chord because it wasn’t about capes or flying. It was about the vulnerabilities we all share and the burdens we all carry.
The country felt united after 9/11. Red and blue became meaningless labels. We all felt the same fear, the same heartbreak, and the same determination to rebuild. Music bridges divides. I saw that firsthand when I performed “Superman” at the Concert for New York City on Oct. 20, 2001. I took pride in the American spirit, our resilience after such an atrocity. I remember somehow locking eyes with a 250-pound union worker in the crowd who held a beer in each hand. We sang “Superman” together, loud and proud, and the tears streaming from his eyes were my tears, too.
Decades later, “Superman” didn’t die. Oceans away, it found a second life.
Read the whole thing.
(Update: here’s an archive copy. — Charlie)
“CHILDISH” IS KIND:
And this childish way of thinking is exactly how Venezuela went from one of the richest nations in the world to not being able to feed itself. https://t.co/IkjC8rWrXj
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) June 18, 2025
HMM: Teens in Crisis: School Versus Family. “What is triggering this precipitous decline in our children’s mental well-being? Dr. Peter Gray writes in Psychology Today that teen suicides jumped more than 400% from 1950 to 1990, largely due to what he has dubbed “the imprisonment theory,” or constraints on independence by institutionalized schooling and correspondingly altered home life.”
TO HAVE GRAVITY, ONE MUST HAVE MASS:
To have gravity, you would have to assume that the NAACP has mass.
It has nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’s completely irrelevant. It has no more high ground or standing.
Why?
Because it’s simply a partisan organization like any other group of hacks.
I think it’s funny that… https://t.co/CQVmiADvRm— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 17, 2025
CHANGE: Streaming Viewership Surpassed Cable and Broadcast Combined for the First Time Ever in May, Nielsen Finds. “The news comes from the Gauge, Nielsen’s monthly TV consumption report, which has now been running for four years. From its launch in May 2021 to this May, streaming usage has jumped 71%, with broadcast down 21% and cable down 39%.”
NEXT, METALLIC BLUE AND CHAMPAGNE:
BREAKING 🚨: Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket
It flew for almost a full minute and reached an altitude of 890 feet before landing within 14 inches of its target pic.twitter.com/gKpZlXODYh
— Latest in space (@latestinspace) June 18, 2025
KRUISER: Dear Democrats: I Won’t Let You Exhaust Me With Your Diaper-Filling Tantrums. “While I have never been a fan of the Democrats’ motivating principles, I do miss the days when they had something other than seething hatred driving them. After Hillary’s fall from relevance, they’ve all become her.”
READER FAVORITE: NORTHYARD Men’s Athletic Running Shorts Quick Dry Workout Shorts. #CommissionEarned
WHO WAS IN CHARGE? The Latest Immigration Numbers Practically Prove Joe Biden’s Criminal Intent
HMM: Microsoft and OpenAI play high-stakes tug-of-war.
Microsoft and OpenAI are engaged in tense negotiations that could unravel one of the most important alliances in AI and fundamentally reorder the industry.
Why it matters: Microsoft has injected billions of dollars in OpenAI and made it a cornerstone of its AI strategy, but the companies have also remained rivals that, in many cases, offer competing AI services.
State of play: The two companies have been in talks for months to amend their partnership, with OpenAI needing approval from Microsoft to move forward with the corporate restructuring it has promised recent investors it would make.
Driving the news: The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that tensions have escalated between the two companies, with OpenAI considering a “nuclear option” of accusing Microsoft of violating antitrust laws.
To date, AI looks an awful lot like the late-’90s dot-com bubble. There’s an awful lot of investing into things people don’t really understand, and zero returns — except for infrastructure providers like Cisco (back then) and Nvidia (today).
Unless something changes, the shakeout ought to be nasty.
MICHAEL GOODWIN: Cuomo should thank Mamdani for making him look like the safe, stable choice for NYC mayor.
In his race for mayor, Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has done the impossible: He’s made Andrew Cuomo look like a safe, stable choice.
Mamdani pulled off the remarkable feat by breaking a cardinal rule of politics: Don’t scare people.
But he has done exactly that by taking such radical positions in the Democrats’ mayoral primary that the portion of the electorate that hasn’t fallen for his vision of a socialist utopia realizes his policies would wreck New York.
His mantra of free this and free that, combined with a rent freeze on 1 million privately owned rent-regulated apartments, while promising that higher taxes on the rich would pay for everything, is music only to the ears of those who are ignorant about history and the laws of economics and human nature.
He’s also anti-cop to the core, which is the absolute last thing New York needs in City Hall.
Mamdani, just 33 years old, is vying to become the city’s youngest mayor.
He’s got clever videos and a lively presence on social media.
The base of his support comes from young New Yorkers, which proves the wisdom of George Bernard Shaw’s observation that “youth is wasted on the young.”
Then there are those ardent leftists behind him who refuse to grow up, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Born in Uganda, Mamdani would also be Gotham’s first Muslim mayor, and his refusal to recognize Israel as the legitimate homeland for Jews is another bridge too far.
New York has more Jews than any other city in the world, and the idea that its mayor would support BDS and other policies that aim to damage and even destroy Israel is unthinkable.
Related: Mamdani says ‘globalize the intifada’ is expression of Palestinian rights.
Zohran Mamdani, a leading candidate in next Tuesday’s New York City mayoral primary, refused to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” during a new podcast interview with The Bulwark released on Tuesday, arguing the phrase is an expression of Palestinian rights.
In an exchange about antisemitic rhetoric on the left, Mamdani was asked by podcast host Tim Miller to share his thoughts on the phrase, which has been invoked at anti-Israel demonstrations and criticized as an anti-Jewish call to violence.
“To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” said Mamdani, a far-left assemblyman from Queens who has long been an outspoken critic of Israel. “And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle,” he said, apparently referring to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
A struggle, eh?
Yes, globalizing the intifada is all about a struggle – a kampf, if you will. https://t.co/l94KteZQHd
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) June 18, 2025
Related: Riots for thee, but not for me:
Shot:
Mamdani has repeatedly said he would “Defund the Police” — and, back during the heyday of the George Floyd riots, he even pushed back when Cuomo said that Defund the Police didn’t really mean defunding the police, with Mamdani insisting that the slogan meant exactly what it said. https://t.co/MrYrd338LF pic.twitter.com/moCSitr5u1
— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) June 15, 2025
Chaser: Zohran Mamdani hires security, citing ‘new level’ of threats in NYC mayor’s race.
CTRL-F “Defund” brings up zero results in the Gothamist’s article.
DOMESTIC TERROR IN MINNESOTA (AGAIN): Five U. Minnesota regents’ properties targeted in vandalism spree.
Find the perpetrators and make an example of them. No more leftist impunity.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is Israel Dragging the U.S. Into Another Regime Change War?
WINNING:
Trump Overnight Presidential Job Approval – is in.
Single overnight approval for last night: 55.96%
He remains unchanged today in the 5-day rolling average pic.twitter.com/VT30gYY394
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) June 18, 2025
A MACH 2.5 SHOTGUN: F-15E Armed With Drone Killing Laser-Guided Rockets Appears In Middle East. “We now have a picture showing a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle down-range in the Middle East with an air-to-air loadout that includes six seven-shot 70mm rocket pods, as well as four AIM-9X and four AIM-120 missiles. This comes a week after TWZ was the first to report on testing of the laser-guided 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets as a new armament option for the F-15E. As we noted at that time, the exact loadout we’re now seeing on a deployed Strike Eagle turns the jet into a counter-drone and cruise missile ‘weapons truck’ with a whopping 50 engagement opportunities, not counting the internal gun.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems’ Fave Argument for Illegals Just Took a Kick to the Groin. “The notion that illegal immigrants became a significant part of the labor pool in the United States because Americans just decided to stop working is absurd. American workers were replaced with cheaper options, plain and simple. Employers got addicted to their off-the-books, substandard pay laborers. It never had anything to with concern for illegal immigrants or the lack of available American workers.”
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Truth wins as ‘citizen journalists’ rise — and legacy media fades.
