May 14, 2025

May 13, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed. Roger, ready to thread out!

Posted at 9:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

I NEED A SURVEY TO TELL ME THIS? Poll: college-educated women end friendships over politics.

If you wanted to drill down to the biggest dividing factor here, it’s the portion of the coalition made up of college-educated women – a cohort that now dominates the politics of the Democratic coalition. In their circles, they say differences of political opinion have led to broken friendships with friends and neighbors at a more than 40-point rate – 67 percent to 24 percent.

One factor here could be an underlying belief that your friends and neighbors are just flat-out racists over their political opinions. Of Kamala Harris voters, Cygnal’s poll found that 62 percent say race relations have gotten worse in the past five years (since the summer of George Floyd), while 55 percent of Trump voters say race relations have improved or stayed the same. And again, the same cohort shows up to double-down on that belief: fully 75 percent of white female Democrats with a college-degree say race relations have gotten worse since 2020 – compared to just 41 percent of black men.

It’s the allyship that matters most, you see – not friendship.

Just as a reminder of how ephemeral most tribal political battles are, the late Charles Krauthammer wrote:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

That was back in 2002, when the then-Hitlers on the left were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Both of whom the Harris campaign eagerly sought endorsements from last year.

Posted at 9:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHANGE:

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS IS CNN: Someone Should Be Fired After CNN Analyst Goes on Wild, Racist Rant Against White South Afrikaners.

South Africa’s ruling party has infamously made singing “Kill the Boer,” which translates to “kill the farmer,” a staple of their political rallies. For context, the song specifically refers to white farmers (Afrikaners) and dates back to the country’s apartheid days. Laws to confiscate their land and extra-judicial killings have taken center stage over the last several years.

For some reason, though, that has greatly offended Democrats, who have finally found refugees they do not want to admit into the country. Funny how that works, right? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. On the other hand, here’s Ashley Allison making it clear that it’s not one.

ALLISON: So if the Afrikaners don’t actually like the land, they can leave that country.

JENNINGS: They are. They’re leaving to come here. These refugees are coming here.

ALLISON: No, they can leave and go to where their native land is, which is probably Germany or…

JENNINGS: Are you against them coming here?

PANELIST: Holland…

ALLISON: Holland, yes.

JENNINGS: Are you against them coming here?

ALLISON: I’m against the hypocrisy of this administration…

JENNINGS: No, no, that’s not the question. The question is are you against them coming here.

ALLISON: If there was actually a genocide happening like there is other places in Sudan and the Congo, I would not, I’m not opposed for Congolese and for the Sudanese to come to Africa [America?] just like I’m not opposed to Venzualans and South Americans coming to America if they are fleeing and looking for asylum. What I am against…

JENNINGS: So just these 50 people, you’re against…

ALLISON: What I am against is that they are being given special treatment when there is not a genocide happening in South Africa, and they just don’t like the law of the land!

What an absolutely deranged thing to say on so many levels. Imagine, for a moment, if a Republican CNN panelist told black Americans that they can “leave and go to where their native land is” if they don’t like laws that physically and financially persecute them. Do you imagine that person would still have a job right now?

Related: Based on This CNN Panel, the Lib Media Is Going to Go Insane Over This South African Refugee Issue.

UPDATE: MSNBC’S Yamiche Alcindor awakens from her four year slumber, finally finds something to be “appalled” about once again: Never Go Full MSNBC: Journo Claims People Are Appalled That White South Africans Aren’t Dangerous.

MORE:

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: Silly Socialite and Aged Madame of the Deep State Whorehouse Sally Quinn Whines That Liberals Don’t Feel “Safe” or Social in Trump’s DC.

Watergate-Era Washington Was Less Toxic Than This

It’s spring in Washington, D.C., the most beautiful time of the year. Dogwood, forsythia, cherry trees, tulips and daffodils decorate every sidewalk, wisterias weep from porch overhangs, and redbuds pop up at every corner. The air is redolent of blossoms, a soft breeze sharing their scent through the streets. It’s the perfect backdrop for the columned monuments and buildings that remind us of the miracle of our democracy. Spring is normally the happiest time of year here.

But not this spring.

This spring Washington is a city in crisis. Physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s as if the fragrant air were permeated with an invisible poison, as if we were silently choking on carbon monoxide. The emotion all around — palpable in the streets, the shops, the restaurants, in business offices, at dinner tables — is fear. People have gone from greeting each other with a grimace of anguish as they spout about the outrage of the day to a laugh to despair. It’s all so unbelievable that it’s hard to process, and it doesn’t stop.

Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling. I lived through the paranoia and vengefulness of Watergate. This time in Washington, it’s different. Nobody knows how this will end and what will happen to the country. What might happen to each of us.

 Quinn’s headline is amazing. We’ve endlessly pointed out that every incoming GOP president is Hitler, only to be rehabbed into the proverbial Wise Elder Statesman to attack the next incoming Hitler. Quinn is using that hoary old Democratic Party cliché to describe how much better past life in her one industry company town was when a previous Republican was in office. (See also, previous Democrat grandees finding newfound respect for the man they spent the mid-1970s hounding out of office.)

No word yet if Quinn will block Trump’s policies with her Ouija board though.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It?

Earlier this semester, an NYU professor told me how he had AI-proofed his assignments, only to have the students complain that the work was too hard. When he told them those were standard assignments, just worded so current AI would fail to answer them, they said he was interfering with their “learning styles.” A student asked for an extension, on the grounds that ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due. Another said, about work on a problem set, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?” And another, when asked about their largely AI-written work, replied, “Everyone is doing it.” Those are stories from a 15-minute conversation with a single professor.

Related: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S RUNNING: Gavin Newsom calls on California cities to ban homeless encampments.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) on Monday called on hundreds of cities and counties to ban homeless encampments on sidewalks, bike paths, and other public property, increasing pressure on local governments to follow the state‘s lead.

His office released a model for a local ordinance that municipalities can adopt to make encampments illegal and clear existing ones.

The template would prohibit camping for more than three days, creating a semipermanent shelter, or camping in a way that blocks sidewalks. It is a very different approach from the traditional liberal one, which has been to emphasize government housing and treatment but not criminalize homelessness.

“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newsom said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”

Just as the Pravda media hid Obama’s radical chic past in 2007 and 2008, and Joe Biden’s infirmities from 2020 to 2024, California’s PR rehab over the next four years will be astonishing to watch.

Posted at 5:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

THAT’S REAL MONEY: Paxton Wrests $1.375 Billion From Google. “More good news out of the Texas Attorney General’s office: He just compelled Google to cough up $1.375 billion to settle a lawsuit over illegally using biometric data.”

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: We’re Digging a Hole to Mars… Well, Sort Of. “Humanity just took another step toward colonizing Mars but this week’s advance didn’t involve Elon Musk’s massive Starship rocket, SpaceX, some gee-whiz new rocket propellent, or even anything that humans can fly, land, or breathe. But yes, Musk was involved because, of course, he was.”

VIP members keep us in business and there’s rarely a better time than now to become one with our 60% off FIGHT promotion.

Posted at 4:20 pm by Stephen Green

MARK JUDGE: The Totalitarian Impulse Buckley Knew.

For the purposes of this first part of the review, however, I’d like to focus on the things Buckley got right. Namely, communism and the totalitarian nature of the American left. The most important paragraph in Buckley appears in a section that takes place in the early 1960s. Buckley was debating Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an advisor to President Kennedy. Schlesinger thought that whenever dictatorships arose in the modern era it was “because democratic government is too weak, not because it is too strong.” The best way to prevent totalitarianism was for the government to create economic prosperity and social equality, providing “a minimum national standard to save individuals from intolerable handicaps.” [Sam] Tanenhaus explains Buckley’s reaction:

This might sound good, Buckley countered, but in reality, Schlesinger and others were concealing their true intentions, their “intellectual desire to redirect society. Even if every citizen had a million dollars, John Kenneth Galbraith would still find a need for government action….There are in motion today forces that want to drain our power into a reservoir. I hope someday Mr. Schlesinger will turn in horror on the system he has abetted.”

Here Buckley gets to the heart of the matter. The left wants revolution and totalitarian control. Period. If every house had a full refrigerator and every American had a job, they would still be calling for revolution. To think otherwise is naïve.

Buckley founded National Review in 1955. Tanenhaus reveals his bravery in those early years in his fight against totalitarianism. Buckley sent a reporter to Cuba to honestly report on Castro, and he openly called liberals who appealed to the Soviet Union cowards. He once proposed that Taiwan could “liberate the United States” because Taiwan’s fight against communism was much braver than any resistance to the same ideology taking place in the United States.

Yet, over time, National Review began to resemble the liberals Buckley once condemned. “National Review thinks we can make peace with the liberals in debates over principles and policies,” the conservative scholar James Piereson told me last year in an interview about the magazine. “But we can’t go too far lest they call us radicals. The other side thinks we are in a wartime situation: the left wants to destroy us. That is a large difference.”

Piereson said that the conservative divide is like a scene from The Godfather. In that film, after a rival faction tries to assassinate the head of the family, someone offers the possibility of a peace deal. “The two brothers reply that you can’t make peace with people who are trying to kill you,” Piereson said. Another conservative publisher put it to me in starker terms: “National Review thinks its job is to police the right. We think that our job is to defeat the left.”

Piereson offered examples.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

A LEARNING CULTURE MATTERS MUCH MORE THAN MONEY: It’s Mormons: Low-spending Utah is #4 for education. “Utah is the best state in the union, according to U.S. News, thanks to a strong economy, a sense of community and — despite spending less per pupil than any other state but Idaho — its education system.”

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

EPISCOPAL CHURCH REFUSES TO RESETTLE WHITE AFRIKANERS, ENDS PARTNERSHIP WITH US GOVERNMENT:

In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that two weeks ago the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”

The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa.

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”

Which seems particularly odd in light of Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde blowing up a National Prayer Service attended by Trump and JD Vance in January to call for more immigration: In sermon to Trump, Bishop Budde pleads for immigrants, transgender rights.

Posted at 2:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: David Plouffe is the Michelangelo of Play-Doh. “The thing is, Concha is entirely correct that Plouffe’s decisions on Al Smith, Rogan, Walz, and Cheney all led to disaster. What Concha misses is that, as bad as those choices were, the alternatives were worse.”

Posted at 2:16 pm by Stephen Green

VDH: The Decivilizing of America.

Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security.

In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented. It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern era, when there were no clearly defined or secure borders, and nomadic peoples migrated as they pleased.

Stranger still, illegal aliens were at times given precedence over citizens—as immigration law was simply discarded.

Without IDs, illegal aliens boarded U.S. flights, while the government ordered citizens to obtain more secure “real” IDs.

Some 8,500 veteran soldiers were drummed out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccinations. Yet 10 million simply walked across the southern border into America, without a care from the Biden administration whether they were vaccinated, ill, or had criminal records.

Any American citizen pulled over for speeding with an invalid driver’s license, while trafficking eight illegal aliens without identification, would be jailed and charged with felony counts. Not Abrego Garcia—the violent spousal abuser, M-13 gang-member, and previously deported illegal alien. He was neither arrested nor even cited by the officers who pulled him over.

One of the great hallmarks of Roman civilization and subsequent Western civilization was its ability to create large cities by importing clean water, removing waste through sewers, and collecting garbage from the streets. Even in the age before microbiology, ancient and premodern city planners knew the connection between cleanliness and epidemics and how to lessen disease through sanitation.

But in the last two decades, our major cities have been de-civilizing. Citizens are told not to flush non-biodegradable plastics down their toilets, both to preserve the environment and to ensure municipal septic systems work properly. They are reminded to pick up their pets’ excrement on sidewalks and in parks. For purposes of collective health, they are taught not to urinate, spit, or defecate in public areas.

Is all that for naught? After all, our mayors and city councils in our biggest and most iconic cities simply destroyed centuries of such health protocols and allowed tens of thousands of homeless people with impunity to inject, urinate, defecate, and fornicate in or on storefronts, streets, gutters, parks, and sidewalks. The stench, flotsam, and jetsam have utterly transformed American inner cities. Central Seattle, Los Angeles, parts of San Francisco, Portland, and Washington, DC, now resemble medieval London or Paris—as if a millennium-long knowledge of basic public health was simply ignored or mocked. In truth, the centers of America’s big cities are spaces where public health protocols are no longer enforced, where all the ancient and hard-won rules of civilization no longer apply. It would likely be safer to walk through Dickensian London of 1850 than to take a nocturnal ride on the New York subway.

Don’t worry though; California will end all its homeless woes overnight, since Gavin Newsom is running in 2028: Newsom calls on California cities to ban homeless encampments.

Posted at 1:30 pm by Ed Driscoll