SOMETIMES THE GOOD GUYS (USED TO) WIN:  In early 2006 I was in charge of creating The Warchiefs, an expansion to Age of Empires 3. In Age 3, native sites were on the map, and you could ally with one by building a trade post. But the native town itself couldn’t be harmed.

And if you ain’t got X (and you ain’t got rhythm!)

THEY’LL FIND A WAY TO BLAME GLOBAL WARMING:   Underwater Volcano Off the Oregon Coast Poised to Erupt.

SO MANY CNN PANELS ARE MELTING DOWN THE JANITORIAL STAFF IS THANKING TRUMP FOR EXEMPTING O/T EARNINGS FROM TAXATION:  Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary’s Remarks About Kamala Caused This CNN Panel to Melt Down.

CLOSING THE BARN DOORS AFTER THE HORSES ARE OUT:  Liberal UK PM Starmer Doubles Down on Border Security After His Party Let the UK Be Overrun by Migrants.

HIMSELF, PEOPLE EAGER TO BE PLAYED … SAME CATEGORY AS BELIEVED BIDEN SHARP AS A TACK:  Starmer on migration – who is he kidding?

LIKE THE COYOTE, THEY IMAGINE THEMSELVES SUPER GENIUSES:  The Liberal Media Thought They Got Trump Jr. They Made a Fool of Themselves Instead.

IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS:  This Throwback to 2021 Should Silence Any Dems Slamming Trump Over Qatari Jet.

MEH. IT WAS A FACADE LONG BEFORE THIS:  The Death of South Africa.

COMPLETE COINCIDENCE:  Fone Fakery And Other Follies.

TODAY’S REMINDER THAT YOU DON’T HATE THE GOVERNMENT ENOUGH:  Trump Team Ain’t Playin’ Around: More Hanky Panky Busted at the CFTC.

SHOOTING THE ELEPHANT IN THE FOOT:  RPV condemns Loudoun County Republican Committee chair’s comments on courting Muslim voters.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT INTERNET KOOK NICHOLAS DECKER:  The George Mason PhD Student Who Called for Blood. A revolutionary mask for personal revenge — disguised as a principled stand for liberty.

HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW?  I want to address other stuff, but they pull me back in.

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!  This is what they want here, too.

WATCH THIS LEGISLATOR RUN HEAD FIRST INTO A BRICK WALL OF LOGIC.

OPEN THREAD: Never wear anything that panics the cat.

AFTER 100 DAYS OF DOGE:

How well is DOGE doing in reducing wasteful government spending 100 days after President Trump jump-started its efforts? The President renamed and retasked the 12-year-old executive branch agency on January 20, 2025, to identify and eliminate fiscal waste within the federal government. DOGE became very visible thanks to the involvement of billionaire Elon Musk, who serves as a temporary government employee advising the service.

Despite that visibility, answering the question of how much money it has saved to date is challenging.

If you go to DOGE’s website, it reports $160 billion worth of savings, or almost $994 per taxpayer. However, Jordan Green of the Memphis Commercial Appeal reviewed the receipts posted at the site, finding they summed up to be over $61 billion, leaving around $100 billion yet to be fully accounted for.

Related: Christopher Rufo: Washington Got the Better of Elon Musk. The tech tycoon’s Department of Government Efficiency was prevented from achieving its full reform agenda.

JONTHAN TURLEY: Oregon Law Professor Accuses Oregon Law Review of Anti-Israeli Discrimination.

The University of Oregon has long faced controversies over the alleged political bias on its campuses, including celebrating the career of a professor who physically attacked pro-life students as a model of activism. It has been criticized for monitoring off-campus speech and unconstitutionally censoring dissenting faculty. Now, Law Professor Ofer Raban is accusing the Law Review and school administrators of discriminating against an Israeli professor who was allegedly rejected for publication because of his association with an Israeli university.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Paul Caron.)

TINY MUMMIES DIG BIG MEMORY HOLE: In “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump,” the excerpt from the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson published at the New Yorker, the Woodward and Bernstein of the 2024 campaign write:

“We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,” David Plouffe, who helped run the Harris campaign, told us. Plouffe had served as Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign manager in 2008 and as a senior adviser to President Obama before largely retiring from politics in 2013. After Biden dropped out of the race, on July 21, 2024, Plouffe was drafted to help Harris in what he saw as a “rescue mission.” Harris, he said, was a “great soldier,” but the compressed hundred-and-seven-day race was “a fucking nightmare.”

“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe said. By deciding to run for reëlection and then waiting more than three weeks after the debate to bow out, Plouffe added, “He totally fucked us.”

The real issue wasn’t his age, per se. It was the clear limitations of his abilities, which got worse throughout his Presidency. What the public saw of his functioning was concerning. What was going on in private was worse. While Biden on a day-in, day-out basis could certainly make decisions and assert wisdom and act as President, there were several significant issues that complicated his Presidency: a limit to the hours in which he could reliably function and an increasing number of moments when he seemed to freeze up, lose his train of thought, forget the names of top aides, or momentarily not remember friends he’d known for decades. Not to mention impairments to his ability to communicate—ones unrelated to his lifelong stutter.

It wasn’t a straight line of decline; he had good days and bad. But, until the last day of his Presidency, Biden and those closest to him refused to admit the reality that his energy, cognitive skills, and communication capacity had faltered considerably. Even worse, through various means, they tried to hide it. And then came the June 27th debate against Trump, when Biden’s decline was laid bare before the world. As a result, Democrats stumbled into the fall of 2024 with an untested nominee and growing public mistrust of a White House that had been gaslighting the American people.
“It was an abomination,” one prominent Democratic strategist—who publicly defended Biden—told us. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party. He stole it from the American people.” Biden had framed his entire Presidency as a pitched battle to prevent Trump from returning to the Oval Office. By not relinquishing power and refusing to be honest with himself and the country about his decline, he guaranteed it.

Curiously, in 2023, the New Yorker was running articles with headlines such as, “Joe Biden’s 2024 Opening Argument: It’s Me or the Abyss:”

Now it’s official: President Joe Biden is running for reëlection. In his opening argument of a campaign that will span the next eighteen months, he portrayed himself as a bulwark against right-wing assaults on freedom, democracy, and social rights. “That’s been the work of my first term, to fight for our democracy,” Biden said, in a three-minute campaign video posted online Tuesday that opens with footage of Trump supporters storming the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

Biden cast the entire Republican Party as an extremist, Trump-dominated organization that is attacking basic American values. Around the country, he said, “MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms, cutting Social Security that you paid for your entire life . . . dictating what health-care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love.”

The video, parts of which were filmed at the President’s home in Delaware, was short on policy pronouncements and large on the broader themes that he has sounded since he announced that he was running for the White House four years ago, and has further emphasized since the January 6th attack. Biden argued that a “battle for the soul of America” is still raging, as fundamental rights and liberties are in peril. The video includes images of Biden and civil-rights campaigners walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma; of him with Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom he nominated to become the first African American Justice on the Supreme Court; and of demonstrators protesting the high court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade. “This is not a time to be complacent,” he said. “That’s why I’m running for reëlection.”

The New Yorker could have noted that Biden rarely appears on camera delivering the above speech. Most of it is audio only, likely because editing audio together is much easier than video — there are no jump cuts to hide; it’s easier to smooth out “umms” and “errs” and cut out pauses when there’s no picture to worry about. And yet, he still slurs a few words. Biden only appears on camera in short moments delivering a couple of the key phrases of his speech:

The New Yorker has occasionally done real journalism — in 2014, Dexter Filkins reported on how Obama tossed aside hard-won gains in Iraq. But no Democrats — least of all Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, and the staff of the New Yorker wanted to be first to say that Biden was cooked.

(Classical reference in headline.)

USA SOURCED: ForestLeaf Colostrum Powder 50% IgG Highest Pure Concentration, Grass Fed Colostrum. #CommissionEarned

COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:

The city council of Providence, Rhode Island, is hosting a flag raising ceremony at the City Hall.

What flag, you ask? A Palestinian flag…

Providence, RI has been conquered. pic.twitter.com/pSXC6RuK1v

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 14, 2025

‘RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS:’ White House Calls Out Episcopal Church Over Refusal to Help White Refugees.

THE 2028 GAME IS AFOOT: Gavin Newsom Twisted So Hard Right That He Might Get Impeached. “That’s a joke, obviously. Democrats never impeach their own, even after they become liabilities; they just exile them to the political wilderness. You and I have spent the last week or so watching them attempting to do just that to a sitting Democrat senator, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman. If Republicans had the same ruthless instincts, John McCain’s last public appearance would’ve been around 1990 — on the side of a milk carton.”

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Trump's Popularity Skyrockets After He Deports All Cyclists https://t.co/rBSnUQizL8 pic.twitter.com/HbFsa7ty9t

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 9, 2025

MISSISSIPPI RISING: Look South for progress in reading achievement.

In 2003, Mississippi was worst in the nation, next to Washington, D.C., for fourth-grade reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), Daly writes. Now, Mississippi ranks fifth. “When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results for student demographics, Mississippi ranked first in fourth-grade reading and math, fourth in eighth-grade reading and first in math.

Black students in dirt-poor, low-spending Mississippi outperform black students elsewhere by large margins, Daly writes. “The average black student in Mississippi performed about 1.5 grade levels ahead of the average black student in Wisconsin,” which “spends about 35 percent more per pupil.”

The success of Mississippi and other Southern states “have been dutifully and perfunctorily name-checked in news stories,” Daly writes, but he sees “a reluctance among national voices to extol Deep South examples as worthy of emulation.”

That last bit speaks volumes about our elites putting snobbery over results.