THIS THAT, AND TWO FIRST CHAPTERS OF THE UPCOMING THING: This, That, And Making The Assistant Happy.
Yes, those are two chapters of the same novel. Yes, it all makes sense when the worlds collide. Yes, it’s space opera. (Yes, it’s coming out soon. It’s finished. Just getting a revision.)
THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS WAITING FOR: Astronomers measure the vibrations of a star 21 light years away.
THEY KEEP USING THOSE WORDS. I DO NOT THINK THOSE WORDS MEAN WHAT THEY THINK THEY MEAN.: ‘Safe and effective’? The gardener’s tale.
WAS ANYONE OFFERING TO BUY IT? Trump offers blunt, 3-word response after Carney says Canada is ‘not for sale’.
STUPID DEMS; THEY THINK LAWFARE IS RESTRICTED FOR THEIR USE: Trump calls NY AG Letitia James ‘a total crook’ — says DOJ will ‘do what’s right’ on fraud criminal referral.
PRIOR SCOTUS DECISIONS HAVE HELD THAT MILITARY ELIGIBILITY IS AN INHERENTLY PRESIDENTIAL DECISION, SO THIS IS NO SURPRISE: Supreme Court Issues Ruling on Trump’s Transgender Military Ban.
INDIA IS EAGER TO BOOST ITS MANUFACTURING: Trump Just Made This Nation Drop its Tariffs to Zero.
TRADITION! TRADITION! TRADITION*! The Pulitzer Prize Was Just Awarded to a Publication That Pushed a Fake News Story.
*The fine tradition of Walter Duranty.
MUCH SHOCKED. SO FACE. WOW, WOW, WOW: Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend.
AND THEY DESERVE IT: My hatred for the media is threatening to become terminal.
PREDICTABLE, OBVIOUS, INFURIATING: Windmills and Solar Panels in Spain and Portugal Provoke the Collapse of the Electric Network.
MAY EVIL ALWAYS TRIP ON ITS OWN FEET: Buffalo School System Attorney Attacks Whistleblower SVU Cop, Botches It Spectacularly.
IT’S AWAYS A MYSTERY. TOTALITARIANS LIE: Trade War Fallout in China a Mystery; Beijing Stopped Reporting Key Economic Data.
THEY HAVE A BIG ENOUGH ENDOWMENT. TIME TO PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTHS ARE: Forget It, Harvard.
BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE: Corrupt Venezuelan officials ‘facilitated’ Tren de Aragua gang’s reign of terror in US.
DAVE PORTNOY GETS MIXED REVIEWS FOR HANDLING OF ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT IN HIS BAR:
In the tweet below, the writer says:
“It is an irrational use of time and resources to try to re-educate antisemites when we are outnumbered and they’re trying to push us off a cliff. It is time to push back. It is time to hurt – not heal the antisemite. I don’t need antisemites to like me. But if they step out of line I want them to face consequences. They – and others – need to know that we slap back. They don’t need to learn what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. They need to learn what happened to the Nazis.”
* * * * * * * *
Related: Why Holocaust Education Isn’t Enough to Combat Antisemitism Today.
UPDATE: Jonathan S. Tobin: Send Barstool Jew-haters to Israel, not Auschwitz.
YOU WILL NEVER FIND A MORE WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY: Kamala chooses the Met Gala over the presidency.
The caption on the photo tweeted from the Democrats account may have read, “Kamala Harris stuns at the Met Gala,” but that is not how most Americans will view it.
Wearing a designer dress to an event where tickets cost $75,000 and laughing it up with the cream of the liberal celebrity and fashion elite, will not go down well in the rust belt.
As candidate Kamala was never confident in herself. The same Kamala was visible last night. Not confident enough to turn down the glittering invitation and not confident enough to embrace it wholeheartedly and strut up the red carpet.
This year’s theme was “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” Black dandyism, we’re told, was a way for subjugated African Americans to challenge preconceptions and subvert the slave-master relationship.
But the whole affair felt lifeless and dull. One wag branded the event “the Meh Ball.”
The highlight was a red stain on Anna Wintour’s dress. Was it blood? Whose? Had she stabbed someone with a high heel? Perhaps for talking about politics?
This one is easy. The September issue is a shadow of its former self. Ad revenues are down at Vogue; clearly Wintour, now on her uppers, bought a dress deeply discounted because of a single, near-invisible stain:
Meanwhile, Whoopi Goldberg, apparently miffed that she didn’t make the cut in yesterday’s New Yorker photo spread of wealthy Manhattanites in their apartments, decided that if they weren’t going to photograph her as a Bond supervillain, she’d dress up as a Batman supervillain instead — specifically, the Penguin:
Then there were the afterparties, where the Weimar Republic called, and said the attendees might want to dial the decadence back: Met Gala 2025 afterparties: Here’s where Rihanna, Heidi Klum, Spike Lee, Janelle Monáe and more kept the night moving.
Much more from Ace who writes: Panem Forever: The Themes of This Year’s Met Gala Were BLM Race Agitation and Cooter.
The Met Gala looks like a scene from The Hunger Games.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 6, 2025
UPDATE: Beautiful Clothes Hide Ugly Souls at the Met Gala: “Last night, in a bit of karmic revenge, a stain appeared on Anna Wintour’s dress. The dress, like Dorian Gray’s portrait, surely said something about the soul to whom it belonged. Tina Fey, who attended many years ago, summed up the event best by describing the Met Gala as a ‘jerk parade.’ Anna Wintour is the grand marshal.”
@letterman
OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: CA gas could hit $8.44 per gallon in 2026 due to refinery closures, regulations.
The new study from University of Southern California professor Michael A. Mische examined California’s historical gas prices, oil supply and refining capacity, and modeled the likely impact of refinery closures and costly new fossil fuel and refinery fees and regulations.
“The shutdown of the two California-based refineries could possibly place the Golden State in a precarious economic situation and create a gasoline deficit potentially ranging from 6.6 million to 13.1 million gallons a day, as defined by the shortfall between consumption and production,” wrote Mische. “Reductions in fuel supplies of this magnitude will resonate throughout multiple supply chains affecting production, costs, and prices across many industries such as air travel, food delivery, agricultural production, manufacturing, electrical power generation, distribution, groceries and healthcare.”
“Based on current demand and consumption assumptions and estimates, the combined consequences of the 2025 Phillips 66 refinery closure and the April 2026 Valero refinery closure, together with the potential impact of legislative actions such as, but not limited to, the new LCFS standard, increase in excise taxes, Cap and Trade, SBX1-2, and ABX2-1, the estimated average consumer price of regular gasoline could potentially increase by as much as 75% from the April 23, 2025, price of $4.816 to $7.348 to $8.435 a gallon by calendar year end 2026,” continued Mische.
Mische said the high delta between California gas prices and that of other states is the result of state taxes and fees, and policies that have reduced in-state oil production and refining capacity faster than gasoline demand has fallen.
From Sacramento’s perspective, that’s all good news from the state that wants to put its drivers on a “road diet” and ban gas stations, dominated by a party which spent three recent terms implementing the mindset of, “Under my plan, [energy costs] will necessarily skyrocket.”
RE-ENTERING SATELLITES — AN OVERRATED PROBLEM? Scientists chased a falling spacecraft with a plane to understand satellite air pollution: “The event was fainter than we expected.”
Unclear at this point.
UMMM…: Michelle Obama Goes Into Therapy, Is ‘Transitioning’ To Next Phase of Her Life.
Let’s just get this out of the way, because I know it’s coming in the comments: no, I don’t believe Michelle Obama is a man who transitioned. I’ve seen the photos, the claims, the so-called “evidence” — and I’ve never bought into any of it. Not once. That said, these rumors have been swirling for years, and you’d have to be willfully ignorant to think she’s not aware of them.
So when she recently said she’s “transitioning” into a new phase of life — come on, really? Of all the words to use, that’s the one she picks? This is the same woman who’s been dogged by the “no photos of her pregnant” crowd, the infamous “Mike” gaffe by Barack, and the persistent rumors about his sexuality. Whether she meant it or not, dropping the word “transition” into the conversation was bound to light that fire again.
On a more serious note: The Obamas Aren’t Going to Rescue the Democrats.
We aren’t just in the post-Obama era; we’re the in the post-post-Obama era. Barack and Michelle are now mostly celebrities, subject to divorce speculation as intense as for any Hollywood couple. No one in the Democratic Party seriously thinks a retired president can lead them out of the wilderness; when Obama salutes Harvard for standing up to Trump, it barely creates a ripple in the news cycle. When the former president marked the anniversary of signing Obamacare into law earlier this year, he acknowledged, “I know it can feel like a different era sometimes.”
Perhaps when your time has passed, and you see your party and your country moving in an extremely different direction than the one you wanted, it leaves you pessimistic and focused on the negative of everything — including living in the White House for eight years.
Regarding the latter, exit quote: “As Meghan McCain quipped, ‘It would be cool if Michelle Obama had literally anything positive to say about anything.’”
‘DEBT DOESN’T GO AWAY:’ Trump Admin Restarts Student Loan Payments.
The Trump administration has resumed collecting defaulted student loan payments for the first time since 2020, while federal data show that just a third of borrowers have returned to regularly paying back their loans.
Beginning May 5, the Department of Education will start collecting unpaid debt from around 5 million borrowers by withholding payments in tax refunds, wages, and Social Security benefits. The agency first announced the recollection process in an April 21 press release, warning that student debt has grown to more than $1.6 trillion in the past five years.
Only a third of the 43 million borrowers have made regular repayments on their loans since March 2020, NBC News reported based on Education Department data.
“American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in the press release.
Much more like this, please.
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