WELL, THE PROBLEM IS A LACK OF TRUST IN THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY, AND THE FOOD INDUSTRY, AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Banning Lab-Grown Meat is Stupid.
May 22, 2025
SOMETIMES, ONLY THE DEATH PENALTY WILL DO:
In the charges against Rodriguez, we now know Sarah Milgrim tried to crawl away, heavily wounded.
He walked after her and shot her again ans again until he had to reload, and she was dead.
Monster. pic.twitter.com/1nncTNAUr7
— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) May 22, 2025
IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Europe Invented Modernity — Now They’re Dismantling It.
SORT OF LIKE AN OPEN THREAD BUT WITH WINE: Instapundit readers are again warmly invited to watch and participate in a videocast in which I’ll be a guest. 7-8 PM EST tonight, and also available on replay.
And like all the best joints, no cover, no minimum.
Several IP folks joined in last week, asking questions or adding comments. The show’s theme is to talk about a wide range of subjects in the news and allow (gasp!) a reasonable conversation, respecting those who express unpopular but well-stated views.
What an idea, right?
Here are the links, take your pick of whichever is easiest for you:
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart Ignores His Critical Role in Biden Cover-Up.
Tapper had it coming. So, too, does Stewart, except he’s pretending otherwise.
Late-night TV, along with “Saturday Night Live,” did all they could to hide Biden’s sad decline. Hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver either ignored the countless Biden gaffes or actively spun reality to pretend he was just an old man, not one battling a dementia-like condition.
Stewart is considered the dean of late-night political humor. And, on occasion, he puts his liberal blinders down to speak straight to his audience.
And yet he did very little of the kind when it came to Biden’s cognitive state.
Read the whole thing.
THIS IS CNN:
After the shooting, the CNN anchor’s main concern is the optics against anti-Israel protesters, not the safety of Jews. Her guest pushes back. It’s an incredible moment of television. pic.twitter.com/8iBFbQgNAA
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 22, 2025
NEW REBOOT OF THE GOLDEN GIRLS LOOKS UNWATCHABLE. 1/10. CANNOT RECOMMEND: The Democrats’ Base Turns Out.
The Democrat Party base gets removed from Secretary Rubio’s hearing on Tuesday.
These protesters are peak cringe. pic.twitter.com/FLNztXXWsc
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) May 20, 2025
Meanwhile, in the wake of last night’s murders, Rubio is looking spot-on in his exchange with Pramila Jayapal:
Jayapal: “You revoked her student visa!!!!”
Based Marco: “Yes. Proudly.” https://t.co/4bABrFvCfc
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) May 22, 2025
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: BBB Passes, and Mike Johnson Should Get Credit.
READER FAVORITE: Under Cabinet Lights, 63 LED Rechargeable Battery Operated Motion Sensor Light Indoor, 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned
UNDER THE BUS: Tapper’s Book May End Kamala’s Political Career.
There’s still no word yet as to whether Kamala Harris will run for governor of California or hold out for another doomed attempt at the presidency. But it might be a moot point in light of revelations in Jake Tapper’s new book “Original Sin” about the Biden administration’s systematic cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Oh sure, we all knew Biden was impaired, but the difference between today and the four years of the Biden presidency is that now even the liberal media is talking about it, and Kamala can’t run from her role in the cover-up.
Past reports indicate that Kamala will make a decision on a gubernatorial bid by this fall. The question is, how will the mainstream coverage of this Biden-Harris administration scandal impact her decision?
She has some serious explaining to do. Throughout Biden’s presidency, she consistently portrayed him as a “strong, effective, and capable leader.” Even after that disastrous June 2024 debate that ultimately led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Harris doubled down, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper it was just “a slow start, but it was a strong finish.”
This scandal isn’t going away. If she chooses to run for governor, she won’t be able to hide from it.
To be fair, Kamala 2020 and Kamala 2024 may have done far worse damage to Kamala’s political career than Tapper and Thompson could ever hope to with their book.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: New Handguns for 2025.
HMM: Target’s Sales Dented by DEI Boycott.
The retail company said a laundry list of problems dragged down its quarterly sales, including a boycott by shoppers who disagreed with its decision this year to end some diversity programs.
Target’s sales have been tepid for years.
Did anyone stop and wonder if maybe Target’s sales have been tepid because the company went all-in on DEI, woke, and “pride” — even in the children’s clothing department?
READER FAVORITE: NutraVive Crepe Repair Cream – Anti-Aging Crepey Skin Treatment. #CommissionEarned
Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has privately expressed openness to joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel in a move that would dramatically shake up the Middle East, according to two congressmen who met with him last month.
In exchange, al-Sharaa wanted assurances that Israel would stop bombing Syria, stop fomenting sectarian divisions and reach a renegotiated arrangement regarding the Golan Heights, Reps. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Martin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Post.
“He said, ‘We’re open to not only recognizing Israel, but also to try and join the Abraham Accords, but they must stop bombing within our nation,’” Mills recounted.
Previously: Syria faces renewed sectarian violence as government fails to deliver inclusivity.
al-Sharaa has to clean up his act before the bombings can stop.
NOW WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO DO THAT?
The same people who told you that Joe Biden was perfectly fine are also telling you that the people who want to murder you don’t really want to murder you https://t.co/pqwUcC8TaY
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 22, 2025
BEN RHODES SMILES:
My. God.
Dems openly saying they are shocked at how stupid and easily manipulated journos are https://t.co/UeY2vM1Z6K
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 21, 2025
In 2016, the failed novelist turned Obama’s Middle Eastern policy “expert” (in)famously told the New York Times, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
And as Steve wrote earlier, regarding Thompson and Tapper themselves, “they seem to think that anonymously and belatedly telling some of the truth gets them off the hook:”
A lot of this. No names. pic.twitter.com/mPeXVjmf7V
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 22, 2025
RESEARCH THAT CHAT GPT CAN’T DO: Archaeologist sailing like a Viking makes unexpected discoveries. “The sailing boat—an open, square-rigged clinker boat similar to the boats used during the Viking Age (800–1050 AD)—traveled from Trondheim up to the Arctic Circle and back in 2022. Since then, Jarrett and his team have sailed over 5,000 kilometers along Viking trade routes (see map). His research shows that the likely routes of the Vikings took them farther from land than previously thought.”
SO? JUST HAVE AI WRITE THE BOOKS: Chicago Sun-Times Published A.I.-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don’t Exist.
An AI-generated list of recommended reading for the summer, published by the Chicago Sun-Times, included several books that don’t exist.
Per NPR, at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer used the same flawed list, titled “Summer reading list for 2025.” Suggested titles included “Tidewater Dreams,” purportedly authored by Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende, which was described as her “first climate fiction novel.” Allende is a real person, but the suggested novel is not a book she or anyone else published.
Another suggestion was “The Rainmakers,” which is described as a story set in a “near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity.” This faux novel was said to be written by 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett.
The outlet noted that only five of the 15 books suggested were real titles.
The Chicago Sun-Times printed a "summer reading list" featuring real authors but mostly made up books, generated by a freelancer using AI.
This comes two months after the newspaper cut 20% of its staff. pic.twitter.com/TLMbDxuey0
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) May 21, 2025
Related: Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI.
Politico’s contract stipulates that the publication needs to use AI in a manner that follows the company’s standards of journalistic ethics. “We’re not against AI, but it should be held to the same ethical and style standards as our political journalists,” says Arianna Skibell, the union’s vice chair for contract enforcement, who writes Politico’s energy industry newsletter. Some union members question whether there’s always appropriate human oversight over the AI content Politico publishes.
In one case, an AI-generated live summary used language around immigration that human writers are not permitted to use, publishing phrases like “criminal migrants” as it covered the vice presidential debates.
“There were also factual errors that the AI inserted that night,” alleges Skibell. For example, she says, the AI credited actions taken by the Biden Administration as things Kamala Harris did. That post was later swapped for replacements without the errors, according to screenshots reviewed by WIRED. “At Politico, you can’t just wholly take down articles written by human reporters without going through a series of approvals, all the way up to newsroom leadership. That did not happen for the AI live summaries,” Wittenberg claims. (Politico did not comment on the specifics of the union’s allegations.)
Union members say they believe the AI-generated posts were handled in a way that violates Politico’s correction and takedown policies. They also allege that one of Politico’s paid premium AI tools for generating policy reports has spewed out incorrect information in the past. Politico’s human reporters broke the news in 2022 that the Supreme Court had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a report on abortion rights generated by the Policy Intelligence Assistance tool in March 2025 was written as though the constitutional right was still in effect.
So AI is now covering events as well as human Politico journalists – that’s real progress!
Politico before vs after the election: pic.twitter.com/LZ4QWceK5F
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 12, 2025
Finally, an oldie but a goodie: DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Politico illustrates story about race and the modern GOP with a picture of Democrat George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. Even more amusingly, it’s labeled “History Dept.”
Exit question:
(Fixed an HTML bug — Charlie)
NO, IT CAN’T BE SAID TOO OFTEN: Two Israeli Embassy Staffers Killed by Gunman Yelling “Free Palestine”.
HE’S NOT WRONG:
After the execution of two Israeli diplomats on our soil, let me be clear:
The fight for the future of Western Civilization and our culture is happening NOW.
The barbarians are at the gate. America stands with Israel and the Jewish people, and we cannot allow our culture to be… pic.twitter.com/WiaajJyqwy
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) May 22, 2025
The indiscriminate killing of Jews is not because the war in Gaza. The war in Gaza is because of indiscriminate killing of Jews.
It’s amazing how hard it is for people to understand this simple fact.
— Yael Bar tur 🎗️ (@yaelbt) May 22, 2025
You caused a riot at a Jewish-owned business on 125th street, then someone started a fire and 7 people died, you contemptible, corrupt, loathsome piece of slime. https://t.co/uzQzVI0Myl
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) May 22, 2025
It's a rotating loop of evil… they hate capitalism, they hate whites, and they hate Jews.
If you think you're going to be exempt from that hate, you're wrong. https://t.co/wXqXhqQLEn
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) May 22, 2025
The FBI needs to bring the full force of the US government down on Chicago leftist networks. There has never been a better rationale for wiretaps, confidential informants, RICO prosecutions. This is the milieu Obama came out of. Rip that whole rat’s nest apart.
— malmesburyman (@malmesburyman) May 22, 2025
Palmer Raids redux? I’m starting to rethink those . . .