DON’T GET COCKY: Here’s What Biden Doesn’t Want You to Know About His Fundraising Numbers. “Some of Biden’s fundraising advantage has been a mirage because he has been jointly fundraising with the DNC since he launched his campaign while Donald Trump only secured the Republican nomination this month. But, even if we ignore that, a deeper dive into Joe Biden’s fundraising numbers points to big trouble for his campaign.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Moore’s Law meet Musk’s Law: the underappreciated story of SpaceX and the stunning decline in launch costs.

Many reporters, as well as the general public, fail to grasp that SpaceX’s approach to rocket development differs fundamentally from NASA’s. Instead of extensive ground testing and a cautious pace to minimize launch failures — which can lead to longer development timelines and higher costs — SpaceX embraces rapid iteration and learning from failure. Elon Musk’s company views each launch, whether completely successful or not, as an opportunity to gather valuable data and improve future designs. Starship is no different. Its “failures” are stepping stones to success, at least so far.

That iterative approach, combined with their vertical integration and in-house manufacturing capabilities, allows SpaceX to move more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional aerospace players — with amazing results. . . .

Berger’s key phrase: “a world in which launch is cheap and abundant.” It’s worth spending a moment on the revolutionary decline in launch costs, the key enabler of the emerging new space age. As Citigroup outlined in a 2022 research note, NASA Launch costs dropped significantly from over $100,000/kg in the mid-1960s to around $5,400/kg for the Saturn V used in the Apollo launches starting in 1967. After the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the average launch cost remained relatively stable for decades, averaging about $16,000/kg for medium/heavy payloads and about $30,000/kg for light payloads. This was due to factors such as the use of existing launch systems, reduced number of launches, high reliability requirements for human spaceflight, and a government-funded spending culture. Bottom line: There simply wasn’t much innovation or financial motivation to be innovative.

Then came SpaceX, which pioneered lower launch costs with the Falcon 9 in 2010 ($2,500/kg) and Falcon Heavy in 2018 ($1,500/kg) that are 30 times lower than NASA’s Space Shuttle in 1981 and 11 times lower than the average launch costs from 1970 to 2010, according to Citi.

I discussed this change and its implications a few years back in my America’s New Destiny in Space.

POINT MADE:

Iranian colonial proxy in Gaza butchered over a thousand, forcing Israelis to flee south, where another Iranian colonial proxy just fired at them–while a third Iranian colonial proxy in the north forced the evacuation southward of over 60,000 Israelis. Time to make a point. https://t.co/rurDFfP41f

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) April 1, 2024

I’M A FEW DAYS LATE FOR THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION, BUT IT’S STILL WORTH NOTING: The man who wrestled global hunger to the ground. Happy 110th birthday to Norman Borlaug, a great American credited with saving a billion lives.

Environmentalists aren’t crazy about him, though, since he made it possible for so many to avoid starvation.

DEROY MURDOCK: Plucked Peacock: Crybaby journos gave NBC brass the bird.

The only thing missing at MSNBC was a mob of black-clad bookers breaking cameras and setting makeup rooms ablaze.

As a news organization, MSNBC botched a perfect opportunity. Several times each week, in an election year, its hosts could have put cameras in McDaniel’s face and asked her tough questions on live TV:

• “Trump faces almost 90 criminal charges. Wouldn’t just one conviction disqualify him among millions of voters?”
• “Trump’s black support stood at 23% in a March 3 CBS News/YouGov poll. That nearly doubles his 12% in 2020. Why won’t he campaign in black neighborhoods?”
• “How will Trump narrow Biden’s widening fundraising advantage?”

Why focus solely on Trump? MSNBC could have grilled McDaniel like a salmon across GOP-related topics:

• “Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R – Georgia) wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R – Louisiana) to stand down. Do you agree?”
• “Why did Republicans reverse their 13-year-long ban on earmarks and recently approve a 1,102-page, $1.2 trillion spending bill stuffed with some 1,400 pork-barrel projects?”
• “The House Republicans’ five-vote majority will dwindle to just one, thanks to their expelling New York’s George Santos before his corruption trial even began. Also, California’s Kevin McCarthy, Colorado’s Ken Buck, Ohio’s Bill Johnson, and (soon) Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher fled the ballfield and drove home in the sixth inning. Do Republicans relish defeat or has their gender-affirming care backfired?”

MSNBC staffers could have interrogated McDaniel, and she would have had to take it. Unlike her old job, she could not say, “No comment” and then hide in her office (which was not her style). McDaniel could have fulfilled her contract and faced on-air questions or clammed up and surrendered her reported $300,000 annual salary.

Turn the tables: Imagine that Fox News Channel hired Biden’s former Climate Czar John Kerry. Rather than implode on camera, my Fox News colleagues eagerly would ask Kerry such questions as:

Gentlemen, you can’t commit journalism here – this is a news channel!

Or as Andrew Styles rhetorically asked last week: What in the Actual F— Is Wrong With These People? (NBC News Edition.) “This is the network that could have broken the story of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual misconduct in 2017. Alas, reporter Ronan Farrow said NBC stonewalled his investigation after Weinstein leveraged his Democratic political connections and threatened to expose Today anchor Matt Lauer’s own history of sexual misconduct. Farrow gave up on NBC, published his story in the New Yorker, and won the Pulitzer Prize.”

Evergreen:

IT ISN’T THAT THE MEDIA IS BIASED, IT’S THAT THEY’RE SO LAZY, STUPID, AND OBVIOUS ABOUT IT: NBC News Brings Out the Big Guns Against Florida, Shoots Self in Foot.

MAKE THE RUBBLE BOUNCE: Captured Hamas Operatives Say Group Collapsing.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Travis Kelce’s dad-bod is preferred by stunning women like Taylor Swift, according to science.

Kelce is, of course, a world-class athlete, but he’s not visually striking at all.

Flashback: This article from back when Salon was actually readable.

TO BE HONEST, I’M GRATEFUL FOR THE HYPOCRISY HERE: Biden Suddenly Uninterested in Environment When Uranium is Involved.

The largest uranium producer in the United States is ramping up work just south of Grand Canyon National Park on a long-contested project that largely has sat dormant since the 1980s.

The work is unfolding as global instability and growing demand drive uranium prices higher.

The Biden administration and dozens of other countries have pledged to triple the capacity of nuclear power worldwide in their battle against climate change, ensuring uranium will remain a key commodity for decades as the government offers incentives for developing the next generation of nuclear reactors and new policies take aim at Russia’s influence over the supply chain. . . .

The biggest change is the fact that the Biden administration is suddenly going all-in on nuclear power. That may come as a surprise to parts of his base who have continued to oppose nuclear power ever since Three Mile Island. In fact, I won’t be shocked if some of them start showing up and protesting Biden over this as soon as they finish their pro-Hamas protests. Then again, he’ll probably convince at least some of them by reminding them that nuclear reactors produce no carbon and are thus blessed by the Climate Goddess.

The other factor is the fact that Russia controls a significant amount of the world’s current uranium supplies. They’re not exactly fans of ours at the moment and the price of Russian uranium is continuing to rise. Much the same way that China is capable of cutting off the global supply of rare metals needed to make batteries for electric vehicles, Russia could choke off much of the uranium supply. We have plenty of uranium in the United States, but we haven’t mined much of it since the early days of our nuclear weapons program.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the current progress that’s being made. I’ve been saying here for years that I’m in favor of an “all of the above” energy plan, and that includes nuclear. The problem is that it takes forever to get a new nuclear plant approved because of endless government regulations, so few energy companies want to invest in it. What bothers me here is all of the blatant hypocrisy on display, not that this is anything new. Nuclear power was evil and bad until somebody realized that it might fit in the climate cult model. Then, almost overnight, it became popular. Fine. Do whatever it takes. Just make sure you look into those new small modular reactors that are in development. They really make nuclear power a lot more flexible and usable in more areas. They’re also a bit cheaper.

I agree entirely.

SANCTUARY, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Denver warns new migrants to leave sanctuary city and move elsewhere.

A Denver city official begged migrant families to move on to other sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago, warning them that a lack of resources in Colorado would cause them to ‘suffer.’

In a clip first obtained by 9NEWS, Communications Liaison Andres Carrera urges a group of recent arrivals inside a migrant shelter to look for support in other places.

‘The opportunities are over,’ Carrera says in Spanish. ‘New York gives you more. Chicago gives you more. So I suggest you go there where there is longer-term shelter. There are also more job opportunities there.’

I’m reminded of Winston Smith in Room 101, begging O’Brien to “Do it to Julia!”

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: Jonathan Haidt on why today’s young people are so anxious.

The technological geegaw Haidt holds responsible for the “great rewiring” of brains of people born after 1995 is not, interestingly enough, the iPhone itself (first released in 2007) but its front-facing camera, released with the iPhone 4 in June 2010. Samsung added one to its Galaxy the same month. Instagram launched in the same year. Now users could curate online versions of themselves on the fly — and they do, incessantly. Maintaining an online self is a 24/7 job. The other day I had to catch a stroller from rolling into the street while the young mother vogued and pouted into her smartphone.

* * * * * * * *

Why are people born after 1996 so, well, different? So much more anxious, so much more judgmental, so much more miserable? Phone culture is half of Haidt’s answer; the other is a broader argument about “safetyism,” which Haidt defines as “the well-intentioned and disastrous shift towards overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the ‘real world.’”

Boys suffer more from being shut in and overprotected. Girls suffer more from the way digital technologies monetize and weaponize peer hierarchies. Although the gender differences are interesting, it’s the sheer scale of harm depicted here that should galvanize us. Haidt’s suggested solutions are commonplace and commonsensical: stop punishing parents for letting their children have some autonomy. Allow children plenty of unstructured free play. Ban phones in school.

For Gen Z, this all comes too late. Over-protection in the real world, coupled with an almost complete lack of protection in the virtual world, has consigned a generation of young minds to what is in essence a play-free environment. In the distributed, unspontaneous non-space of the digital device, every action is performed in order to achieve a prescribed goal. Every move is strategic. “Likes” and “comments,” “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” provide immediate real-time metrics on the efficacy or otherwise of thousands of micro-decisions an hour, and even trivial mistakes bring heavy costs.

In a book of devastating observations, this one hit home very hard: that these black mirrors of ours are “the most efficient conformity engines ever invented.”

A London Times interviewer said to Haidt, “Climate change is often cited as an alternative explanation, I suggest.” He responded:

“If the mental health crisis started among girls in 2018, I would say, wow, Greta Thunberg really affected girls. But why did this start, especially with preteen girls, in 2013? And why are 12 and 13-year-old girls particularly affected? So it doesn’t fit the timing or the demographics.” Similarly, if economic gloom was to blame, adolescent depression should have spiked in 2009, hit boys equally and subsided as the economy recovered. “But we’ve seen the exact opposite.”

What about the pandemic? Haidt shakes his head. “Covid is a tiny player in this story. When you look at the graphs, it is a blip in the long run. By 2023 the data was all now basically where it would have been if Covid had never happened.” If social media is so dangerous, why are we not seeing the same mental health crisis in adults? “Because the people with the least willpower and the greatest vulnerability to manipulation are children and adolescents.”

Haidt owns a smartphone and gave his own son an old iPhone at the age of nine, when he began walking to school alone. “We didn’t even think about alternatives.” By the time his daughter was eight, and beginning to pop out to the neighbourhood shops alone, Haidt had read enough data to give her a Gizmo watch instead, offering only GPS tracking and limited phone calls. By 11 she was begging to be allowed on Instagram, because “everyone had it. And she is very much the sort of girl who would have gotten sucked into Instagram, had we let her. But by 12 she was telling me that she doesn’t even want it because the girls on Instagram in her school are stupid.” Now 14, his daughter is begging for Snapchat, but won’t be allowed any social media until 16.

A Politico interviewer asked Haidt, “Why is it that social media is causing bigger mental health problems for girls than boys even as girls outpace boys in the classroom?”

They are two separate issues. I believe social media harm girls more because social media offers the lure of social connection in a way that appeals to girls, but then it literally blocks quality social connections. So it harms girls more than boys.

As for school performance, the issue there is not that girls are doing so great, it’s that boys are withdrawing from the real world. They’re just investing less time and effort in everything that matters for success in life, as Richard Reeves has pointed out in his wonderful book Of Boys and Men. They’re largely spending more and more time on video games and other digital pursuits.

The digital life is not causing depression and anxiety in boys to the extent that it is in girls, but it’s causing them to drop out of life, not cultivate skills, like flirting or courtship or working for pay. It’s causing them to drop out of life in ways that will block their flourishing for the rest of their lives.

You call for action in the book from parents, educators, Congress and Silicon Valley. Who has the most responsibility to limit kids’ access to smartphones and social media?

The parents have the primary duty and oversight; the problem is that parents are struggling to do it and they’re not able to. The situation is just as if we said the drinking age is 21, and it’s the parents’ responsibility to enforce this because you can’t expect bars and casinos and strip clubs to check IDs. That’s obviously absurd. Parents can’t do that unless they literally lock up their children and do not let them outside, and it’s the same thing here.

If your child can get to a computer that is connected to the internet, they can open as many Instagram and TikTok accounts as they want. You’ll never know. Parents are in an impossible situation.

Both the libertarian-oriented Reason and the leftists at the New York Times are skeptical of Haidt’s argument. Regarding the Gray Lady, John Sexton of Hot Air writes, “Despite the subtle shade directed at him, most of the readers seem to believe Haidt is on to something with his new book. This is the top comment, upvoted more than 1,800 times:”

I taught high school for nineteen years. I left in 2022. Number one reason: the phones. Students enter class looking at their phones, they walk down the halls looking at their phones, and they sit around the cafeteria and campus after school looking at their phones. It’s only because the handheld digital onslaught occurred over several years that we don’t see it for what it is. Now I teach at a middle school where students never have their phones available. The result? Eye contact, good cheer, lively conversation, laughter, playfulness, and a sense of camaraderie. I left the clouds behind, and now the sun is out again. I’m happy.

Newton Minow, grappling in the early 1960s with negative effects of television, the omnipresent new technology of his era, might have had an inkling of what was to come in the 21st century, but would have had no idea how it would reshape the brains of the young.

KURT SCHLICHTER ON THE LEGAL CHAOS SURROUNDING TRUMP: “I shake my head when people ask me my legal opinion about what’s going on. My legal opinion about what’s going on is it has nothing to do with the law at all.”

RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY:Why a Rabbi Wants Biden to Stop Taking Jesus Out of Easter.

WATCH WHAT THEY DO, NOT WHAT THEY SAY:

The true state of international relations is most candidly expressed not in diplomatic statements but in defense budgets.https://t.co/GMyaiDsQMH

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) March 31, 2024

DEPRECIATION: Oh, Cool, Our $69K Fisker Ocean Is Only Worth $21K Now.

We bought a 2023 Fisker Ocean Extreme for our long-term test fleet in January — as in, two months ago. At the time, we paid $69,012 for a pretty loaded example of Fisker’s electric SUV, with the promise of over-the-air enhancements to come.

But following a brunt of bad news for Fisker, Inc. this week — including rumors of bankruptcy and a mega price drop on 2023 model-year Oceans in an effort to boost cash flow — we thought it wise to have our Ocean appraised at our local CarMax store. (Full discolsure: Edmunds is a division of CarMax.) The appraisal we received was shocking, to say the least.

Yep, you read that correctly: Our 2-month-old Fisker Ocean with 4,220 miles on the odometer is worth $21,000, according to CarMax. That’s a depreciation of 69.6%.

For context, experts say most new vehicles depreciate an average of 20% in their first year of ownership, with subsequent 15% decreases in the years after. On that timeline, we’ve experienced more than five years’ worth of depreciation in just two months. Two months.

Ouch.

PRIORITIES: ISIS Is at War With the World Again, Thanks to Biden and Putin.

BEST SELLER: Solar Eclipse Glasses – ISO & CE Certified for Direct and Safe Viewing of the Sun. #CommissionEarned

SOD OFF, FED: FBI Agent Says He Hassles People ‘Every Day, All Day Long’ Over Facebook Posts.

The FBI spends “every day, all day long” interrogating people over their Facebook posts. At least, that’s what agents told Stillwater, Oklahoma, resident Rolla Abdeljawad when they showed up at her house to ask her about her social media activity.

Three FBI agents came to Abdeljawad’s house and said that they had been given “screenshots” of her posts by Facebook. Her lawyer Hassan Shibly posted a video of the incident online on Wednesday.

Abdeljawad told agents that she didn’t want to talk and asked them to show their badges on camera, which the agents refused to do. She wrote on Facebook that she later confirmed with local police that the FBI agents really were FBI agents.

“Facebook gave us a couple of screenshots of your account,” one agent in a gray shirt said in the video.

“So we no longer live in a free country and we can’t say what we want?” replied Abdeljawad.

“No, we totally do. That’s why we’re not here to arrest you or anything,” a second agent in a red shirt added. “We do this every day, all day long. It’s just an effort to keep everybody safe and make sure nobody has any ill will.”

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: U. Oregon professor to lecture on ‘surplus’ white nationalism and its ‘climate obstruction.’

I remember when higher education was supposed to make intellectual contributions.

LESS DOMESTIC SPYING, MORE ACTUAL CYBER DEFENSE, PLEASE. How cool would it be if our internal security agencies spent their time on protecting us from near-apocalyptic hacking from foreign powers instead of monitoring random Americans’ Facebook pages? Props to hero Andres Freund of Microsoft, though, for doing the job the NSA and FBI won’t do.

Needed Disclaimer for Any Criticism of US Intel Agencies: I am not suicidal, nor do I have information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of Hillary Clinton.

I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: ‘Equity-Based Algebra’ Is as Bad as You Imagine It to Be.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: ‘Equity-Based Algebra’ Is as Bad as You Imagine It to Be.

WEIRD, BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME INFLATION WAS TRANSITORY, A HIGH-CLASS PROBLEM, AND OVER ALREADY: Inflation Victory Is Proving Elusive, Challenging Central Banks and Markets.

The decline in inflation from highs of around 9% to 10% across advanced economies in 2022 represent the easy gains, as supply-chain blockages eased and commodity prices, especially for energy, normalized.

The “last mile” is proving tougher. Underlying inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, slowed to 3% in the second half of last year across advanced economies but has since moved up to 3.5%, according to JP Morgan estimates.

That is forcing investors to rethink bets that inflation would steadily decline to central banks’ targets, generally around 2%. There are even concerns it could surge again, mirroring the second wave that characterized the high inflation of the 1970s.

Economists’ and central banks’ forecasts of sustained falling inflation depend on “strong gravitational forces that are not yet validated in global labor costs, short-term expectations, or in recent signals from commodity markets,” JP Morgan wrote in a note. Services inflation remains elevated while goods prices, which had fallen last year, are now moving higher, it noted.

Central bankers say they expected the last mile of falling inflation to be bumpy. Yet they are also signaling their willingness to wait before cutting interest rates.

What Washington really need to do is cut spending and borrowing but don’t hold your breath.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fake Catholic Joe Biden Tried to Cancel Easter, but Jesus Won. “Easter is the holiest day of the year for Christians, and Biden choosing to wax on about a lunatic leftist agenda ‘holiday’ instead is disgusting. That he chose Good Friday to do it shows that he isn’t really Catholic at all and that he doesn’t have any real people of faith in his inner circle. That was beyond tone-deaf. It was a display of contempt for Christians.”

HOPE FOR TURKEY:

including 14 large and significant ones such as Ankara (the capital), #Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya and more.
According to Turkish media, this was a surprise they did not expect. (2/5)

— AbuAliEnglish (@AbuAliEnglishB1) April 1, 2024