OR MAYBE YOU WILL: You’ll Never Believe What Slow Learners the Democrats Are. “It seems like only earlier today [it was only earlier today, Steve —Editor] that I was encouraging Democrats to go on with their bad selves and dive deep into progressive loserdom with future presidential candidates like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is my gleeful duty to report that no such encouragement was required.”
Archive for 2025
April 16, 2025
THE PEOPLE WHO AFFECT TO BE UPSET ABOUT THIS DON’T SUPPORT JAILING OR DEPORTING THE SHOOTERS, THOUGH: Emergency rooms treat a gunshot wound every half-hour.
The Texas teen accused of fatally stabbing a high school football star at a track meet allegedly lives in a $900K home inside a luxurious gated community — despite requesting a judge lower his $1 million bond because of financial difficulties, according to a report.
Karmelo Anthony, 17, is shacked up with his family at the pricey home inside the gated community of Richwoods in Frisco, Texas, after he was released from jail Monday on a reduced $250,000 bond for allegedly killing Austin Metcalf earlier this month, the Daily Mail reported.
The home — where rent is estimated to be $3,500 a month — had a white Suburban, a black Acura, and a third sedan in the driveway on Tuesday, according to the outlet.
A neighbor said that the family had just bought a new ride.
“He got a new car,” the resident told the outlet. “If you look at the license plate, it’s got a paper tag and it says it expires June 4.”
Being an accused murderer with multiple witnesses ain’t what it used to be.
THE U.S. ACCOUNTS FOR .1% OF GLOBAL SHIPBUILDING: So, Does China’s Shipbuilding Capacity Concern You?
VDH: China Would Lose a ‘Trade War’ With the US—’Gradually, then Suddenly.’
China has done everything possible to incur global distrust and fear.
Most of the world accepts that the COVID-19 epidemic that killed and maimed millions worldwide was birthed in a Wuhan virology lab under the auspices of the People’s Liberation Army. The world also remembers that China and the Chinese-controlled WHO lied repeatedly about the origins and spread of the virus.
The global public may recall that China stopped all domestic flights out of Wuhan on the internal news of the lab leak of the virus, while for days greenlighting nonstop air travel to major European and American cities. The world now accepts that China will never explain exactly when the virus appeared, how it “escaped” from the lab, why it was created in the first place, why Beijing repeatedly lied about all such inquiries, and what happened to an array of whistleblowers who warned of the leak.
China’s so-called allies, such as Russia and India, have historical grievances and ongoing border disputes fueled by Chinese aggression.
NATO, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the US also are curious as to why China is using its vast foreign exchange not to lift about a quarter of its population out of third-world-level poverty. Instead, it is frantically building 3-4 nuclear bombs a month, a 700-ship navy, and 2,500 combat aircraft as it ratchets up pressure on Taiwan.
The complexities of trade and tariffs present all sorts of minefields. But the Trump administration is beginning to navigate them, and its trajectory is rather simple. In the next 90 days, it will likely conclude trade deals with our allies and third parties that bring either tariff parity or no tariffs at all that will reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
Of course, our allies and neutrals still use stealth tariffs to ensure advantage by money manipulation, VAT taxes, and pseudo-health and security impediments to free trade. And they deeply resent the Trump administration’s loud denunciations of their surpluses and asymmetrical tariffs. But those machinations can be addressed later in round two after tariff reciprocity or elimination is finalized.
For now, Trump should persuade our allies that if they were not so subject to Chinese mercantilism, they would have more flexibility to ensure fair trade with the U.S. And thus, they should not do something self-destructive and side with China but instead join the U.S. to force China to keep its long-broken promises and play by international rules. A reduced import footprint from China in the U.S. could make room for increased imports from the EU, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—if they strike parity deals with the Trump administration. Barring that, they should simply get out of the way and not opportunistically cut reformist trade deals with China.
If China really does reduce most of its exports to the U.S., America will have to scramble for a year or so to establish new supply chains and some alternate importers of U.S. products. But after a year of gradual dislocation, China will begin to hemorrhage, and then quite suddenly, given the U.S. has almost all the advantages—if it chooses to use them.
Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: We are still feeling the aftershocks of the Oklahoma City bombing.
On ABC News, the network’s national security correspondent, John McWethy, reported that “if you talk to intelligence sources and to law enforcement officials, they all say … that this particular bombing probably has roots in the Middle East.”
And in a commentary published shortly after the bombing, syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer asserted “the indisputable fact is that it has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East.”
Surprise was substantial when, two days after the attack, the Oklahoma City bomber was brought briefly before television cameras as he was taken into federal custody. The bomber was no foreigner. He was not from the Middle East. He was Timothy McVeigh, a lanky white American from upstate New York.
McVeigh nursed numerous grievances about the federal government. He was outraged by the deadly assault by federal agents in 1993 to end a weeks-long siege near Waco, Texas, at the compound of the Branch Davidian cult. McVeigh timed his attack on the nine-story Murrah building to coincide with the second anniversary of the fiery end to the standoff in Waco, in which 76 Branch Davidians were killed.
According to his biographers, McVeigh was neither a leader nor a member of an extremist hate group or of a self-styled paramilitary militia. Contrary to a New York Times report four days after the Oklahoma City attack, there was no “broader plot behind the bombing” nor was there “a conspiracy hatched by several self-styled militiamen who oppose gun laws, income taxes and other forms of government control.”
And then there was Bill Clinton’s shameful exploitation of the bombing, as Byron York wrote 15 years ago this month: How Clinton exploited Oklahoma City for political gain.
Later, under the heading “How to use extremism as issue against Republicans,” [Dick] Morris told Clinton that “direct accusations” of extremism wouldn’t work because the Republicans were not, in fact, extremists. Rather, Morris recommended what he called the “ricochet theory.” Clinton would “stimulate national concern over extremism and terror,” and then, “when issue is at top of national agenda, suspicion naturally gravitates to Republicans.” As that happened, Morris recommended, Clinton would use his executive authority to impose “intrusive” measures against so-called extremist groups. Clinton would explain that such intrusive measures were necessary to prevent future violence, knowing that his actions would, Morris wrote, “provoke outrage by extremist groups who will write their local Republican congressmen.” Then, if members of Congress complained, that would “link right-wing of the party to extremist groups.” The net effect, Morris concluded, would be “self-inflicted linkage between [GOP] and extremists.”
Clinton’s proposals — for example, new limits on firearms and some explosives that were opposed by the National Rifle Association — had “an underlying political purpose,” Morris wrote in 2004 in another book about Clinton, Because He Could. That purpose was “to lead voters to identify the Oklahoma City bombing with the right wing. By making proposals we knew the Republicans would reject…we could label them as soft on terror an imply a connection with the extremism of the fanatics who bombed the Murrah Federal Building.”
It was a political strategy crafted while rescue and recovery efforts were still underway in Oklahoma City. And it worked better than Clinton or Morris could have predicted.
Democrats would repeat that playbook in 2011 after an apolitical lunatic shot Gabrielle Giffords, and the entire DNC-MSM nexus immediately blamed Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.
UPDATE: Sarah Palin Gets Another Crack at Making the New York Times Pay for Reckless Article.
MORE: John Nolte: Oklahoma City Bombing Review: Compelling Netflix Doc Takes Us Back to a Dreadful Day.
FACE, MEET PALMSKI: Russia Reveals They Control Drones From Atop School For Psychics.
This was hardly a shining moment in operational security, as the Internet quickly geolocated the office to the precise tower being used.
But wait! It gets better! It turns out that drone operations are being run from atop a school for psychics.
War is always absurd but this one feels more absurd than most.
COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:
Pennlive: police warrant says arsonist targeted Pa. Gov. Shapiro for “what he wants to do to Palestinian people” https://t.co/Z9zK5soClz
— Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) April 16, 2025
Nope, sure doesn’t look MAGA to me.
More:
Just to recap, we’ve now had a CEO murdered, two assassination attempts against a now-president, a governor nearly killed with his family, and businesses burned to the ground…all by left-wingers.
But CNN just can’t find any examples of left-wing extremism.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) April 16, 2025
This is CNN.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR BRITAIN: ‘Adult Baby’ Diaper Fetishist Terrorizes Multiple Daycares With Feces.
(Headline corrected.)
START SUMMER EARLY: NYS Collection Retro Oversized Square Aviator Sunglasses. #CommissionEarned
WELL DONE, LADIES:
It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK. @ForWomenScot, I’m so proud to know you 🏴💜🏴💚🏴🤍🏴 https://t.co/JEvcScVVGS
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025
UPDATE (From Ed):
'A Woman Is An Adult Human Female' Rules U.K. Judge That Looks Suspiciously Like Matt Walsh In A Powdered Wig https://t.co/oojeLzDTUX pic.twitter.com/aaonLfFimG
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 16, 2025
MICHAEL WALSH: Which Is to Be Master?
To justify their very expensive parasitical role in the conduct of policy, no doubt they can all quote Robert Bolt’s speech for St. Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons by heart:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
Spoiler alert: More wound up separated from his head shortly thereafter, first placed on a pike on London Bridge and later in a casket, which his daughter Margaret and her family kept for many years as the ultimate memento mori. It’s a pretty speech but are the sentiments expressed in it correct? As former Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote in 1963: “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” In this, he echoed Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion in a 1949 case that “there is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.” Jackson knew whereof he spoke, having been one of the lead prosecutors of National Socialist German Workers Party war criminals at Nuremberg.
Read the whole thing.
PRESIDENT XINIS OVERRULES TRUMP: A Federal Judge Just Threatened the Trump Administration.
BEEGE WELBORN: Taking on Teddy’s Strip at the Border.
There’s a 60-foot wide strip of land that runs through three states along the length of the United States border known as the ‘Roosevelt Reservation.’ The federal and tribal lands that form the 632-mile long strip account for about a third of the 2000-mile long US-Mexico border. All the rest is Texas.
Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic visionary that he was, saw a need to keep an eye out towards the South and leave some maneuvering room, as there were already problems with bandito incursions and smuggling going on across the borders.
Much more at the link.
WHY WOULD MEN AVOID TODAY’S COLLEGES? More than 20 colleges join initiative to address male enrollment decline.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Hill Says ‘Buzz Builds Around AOC’s Future’ and I Say PLEASE LET THIS HAPPEN.
SQUEEZE HARDER: Iran’s Negotiating Position Gets Worse and Worse.
The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East want to ensure that Iran won’t build nuclear weapons; Iran wants to gain relief from harsh U.S.-led economic sanctions and avoid potential Israeli or American military strikes on its nuclear sites. Until recently, Khamenei was unwilling to consider making the concessions necessary for an agreement. But the pressure on Khamenei’s regime—both external and domestic—has grown to the point that he had no choice but to retreat.
During the past year, Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, a coalition of pro-Tehran militias across the Middle East, has been crushed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Hezbollah and American strikes on Yemen’s Houthis. The Syrian revolution that brought down Bashar al-Assad, Khamenei’s close ally, further eroded the Iranian leader’s strategy of “forward defense”—which is to say, relying on its Arab proxies to keep its adversaries away from the homeland. Meanwhile, Trump has also bolstered America’s presence in the Persian Gulf, suggesting to Khamenei that military attacks on Iranian soil are the most likely alternative to negotiations.
Inside Iran, public discontent with the regime’s political repression and economic mismanagement has grown. Many in the Iranian establishment are making ever more explicit demands for an end to their country’s isolation.
In a remarkable display of elite dissatisfaction, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri, commemorated the Iranian New Year holidays earlier this month by shooting a video message outside Persepolis, the seat of the First Persian Empire, which dates back to the sixth century B.C.E. Bagheri expressed hope that Iran could follow “the same ideals” he had witnessed in the ancient monument: “peace, calm, friendship, and brotherhood with other nations.” Such a statement from Iran’s top soldier was unprecedented.
Was that message tacitly approved by Khamenei or is Iran’s regular military (not the Revolutionary Guard) sending a message of its own?
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Are So Desperate They Pulled Biden Out From Under the Bus. “The MSM lap dogs’ coverage of the speech was a prime example of the Left’s ability to forget recent history when it’s inconvenient for them. After months of blaming Biden for Kamala Harris’s defeat and giving unquestioning, glowing reviews to books about his mental decline written by members of their own ranks, they decided that he was A-OK again.”
TWO PROBLEMS: 1. PEOPLE HATE CELEBRITIES NOW. 2. SPACEX TOTALLY OVERSHADOWS BLUE ORIGIN. Mainstream Media Attempts to Generate Excitement Over Blue Origin’s Bevy of “Glamornauts:” Meanwhile, alternative media was a little more skeptical of mission’s contribution to female power or a serious space program.
I mean, this would have been a big deal in 2010.
DISGRACEFUL. Fired Insubordinate Officers Reveal Massive U.S. Military Resentment Against Elected Civilian Command. They’re the tip of the iceberg, I fear.
CDR SALAMANDER: Kendall, NGAD, & the Acquisition Mindset that Must Go.
Why did we build LCS around the never-was-has-been NLOS? Why do we have three white elephants in the fleet? Why, four decades after the end of the Cold War, are all our tactical aircraft derived from Cold War era designs? Why, when we find ourselves needing the ability for submarines to be able to lay mines and fire anti-ship cruise missiles, the submarines that we have in production can do neither?
Simple, a mindset. A self-destructive mindset that not only thinks it knows what the future is, it is terrified into paralysis to do anything to prepare for it today. If you take arrogance and blend it with insecurity, you about have it.
The US military can be a learning institution. The US Navy and USAF years ago decided to part ways for their next fighter aircraft. In a way, it is a confession of what most will admit in hushed tones: we don’t want a repeat of the less-than-optimal result from the F-35A/B/C. In the end analysis, the product was the result of a cascading series of compromises that begat the flawed but still pretty good.
We were lucky in that history gave us a bit of a holiday from serious competition.
The holiday is over — and do read the whole thing.