Archive for 2025
May 27, 2025
BLUE CITY BLUES: Denver mayor points finger at Trump after $250M shortfall brings hiring freezes, furloughs.
The city and county of Denver plans on hiring freezes and furloughs as it projects $250 million in revenue shortfalls over the next couple years.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, laid some of the blame on the Trump administration for the municipality’s budget woes in a fiscal update given on Thursday.
“The economic downturn and volatility brought on by President Trump is a major challenge facing Denver,” Johnston said in a written statement. “This uncertainty, coupled with declining revenues and significant growth in the cost of city government over the past decade, require us to immediately address the city’s structural budget deficit while protecting essential services and positioning Denver for economic growth in 2026 and beyond.”
The city projects a $50 million revenue gap for the remainder of this year and a $200 million shortfall in 2026.
Johnston explained the growth of city government is “unsustainable,” nearly doubling in size over the last 12 years while costs have increased 83% and revenue has grown by 75%, leaving an 8% difference.
Sounds like you have a spending problem, Mr. Mayor, not a Trump problem.
NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…: Now We Know the Real Reason Tapper and Thompson Wrote About Biden. “Sure enough, the pivot is already underway. This week, while being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, Tapper made it clear the book is less about reflecting on the media’s failure to vet Biden—but a call to arms to pivot directly to Trump.”
“Sure, we lied about Biden for years, but now that we’ve made a non-apology tour, you can totally trust us on Trump,” is quite the flex.
READER FAVORITE: Men’s Casual Shorts 7″ Lightweight Golf Shorts for Men. #CommissionEarned
RATHER A LOT, REALLY: What Could A Hostile Federal Government Do To Law Schools?
DON’T FORGET THE DRONES AND MISSILES! Trump says US wants to make tanks, not T-shirts.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday his tariff policy was aimed at promoting the domestic manufacturing of tanks and technology products, not sneakers and T-shirts.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said he agreed with comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on April 29 that the US does not necessarily need a “booming textile industry” – comments that drew criticism from the National Council of Textile Organizations.
“We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to make, do the AI thing,” Trump said.
T-shirts are nice, but the “big things” are necessities.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Former Cornell professor, climate protesters deface university founder statue at graduation.
#METOO: Seattle Cops Have Finally Had it Up to HERE With the City.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) said on X Saturday night that they don’t have “the proper staffing to handle any more of these demonstrations that turn into mass arrests.”
They also warned that “this city lacks the political will to allow police to use the necessary tools to hold back criminal mobs to protect life and property.”
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement that the city “is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice.”
“Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
Why, yes, that was a provocative location for a MayDayUSA rally — and entirely the city’s fault.
Much more at the link.
THIS SEEMS TO HAPPEN A LOT: Self-described ‘social justice advocate’ prof arrested on child pornography charges.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Courts are infected with ‘injunctivitis’ — and tempting Trump’s defiance.
THEY HAD TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT: Biden Aide Admits Staff Did ‘Undemocratic Things’ Because Trump Was ‘Existential Threat To Democracy.’
The revelation came during an appearance by Axios reporter Alex Thompson on “Fox News Sunday” with Shannon Bream, where he discussed insider accounts from his reporting on the Biden administration. Thompson described a mindset inside the White House — one in which unelected aides saw themselves as the real decision makers while shielding Biden from scrutiny and managing the presidency behind the scenes.
“If you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe — that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things,” Thompson said.
Thompson also cited a quote from his reporting in which a longtime Biden aide openly admitted the president “just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years.”
They wanted unaccountable power for four years, and got it — democracy be damned.
SKYNET SLOUCHES TOWARD THE BAY AREA TO BE BORN:
From the model card. Again, thank you @AnthropicAI for sharing these findings publicly instead of pretending they don't happen like the other companies – it's REALLY important.https://t.co/QxHi6PlVSe pic.twitter.com/RnZB4xfcPg
— AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes ⏸️ (@AISafetyMemes) May 26, 2025
AI researchers are essentially doing gain-of-function here, without much in the way of supervision or clear consequences.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Just Checking, Leftoids, Genocide Is Cool Now, Right? “To the far left, victimhood is more exalted than a trans kid in a New York City school. But to anyone possessing even a hint of sanity, trans loons, like Gazans, aren’t being ‘genocided.’ If anything, they walk on water.”
ILYA SHAPIRO: The Rubio Update of the Monroe Doctrine: What an America First foreign policy in Latin America looks like.
Is there any Trump candidate who has overperformed expectations more than Marco Rubio?
THE PLAN COMES TOGETHER: Now We Know the Real Reason Tapper and Thompson Wrote About Biden.
DON SURBER: Trump has Harvard on the run: The Orange Man knows how to use his power in this presidency. “The public is behind Trump because college administrators tarnished the Harvard brand long ago. Higher education in general suffers a backlash over trillions in unpaid student loans, DEI, LGBT and the promotion of communism in general.”
HAS MAN PAID UP HIS HALF-MILLION PENALTY FOR LYING YET? No “Insurrection” Here, Nosirreebob: Michael Mann’s Call To Arms.
WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD: Gen Z wants work to be fulfilling and flexible — and they don’t like deadlines.
Students need to learn workplace etiquette and expectations, says Shannon Anderson, a sociology professor at Roanoke College in Virginia, who teaches a course to prepare students for internships. When schools went remote, high school teachers were urged to let students turn in work late, and some college professors are still giving “grace,” Anderson says. So, “when somebody comes in and says, ‘You have to get things in by the deadline,’ they feel angry.” And they don’t realize employees can’t just grant themselves a “self-care day.”
Gen Zers want “to be included in decision-making, kept informed, given personalized attention, provided flexibility in the work schedule, given a clear growth path, provided an opportunity for work-life balance, and to be part of an organization that does good,” according to a 2024 study by Wake Forest’s Patrick Sweeney and colleagues. Young workers have “to earn their stripes” before being listened to, employers tell Sweeney.
I’m so old, I remember when college prepared young people for real-world work environments.
TRUE:
Non-experts have an excellent track record for the past ten years. https://t.co/IMLZUMWtDQ
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 25, 2025
Related:
JD Vance isn’t just criticizing universities. He’s exposing the collapse of the knowledge regime that once legitimized elite power.
1. The Reproducibility Crisis = Epistemic Collapse
When science can’t replicate its own findings – especially in fields like psychology and…
— SightBringer (@_The_Prophet__) May 24, 2025
Also related: The Suicide of Expertise.
DAVID SOLWAY: Mark Carney’s Plan for Canada. “Clearly, as Canada grows poorer Carney grows richer. There seems to be a reciprocal relation between the two phenomena. The average Canadian family paid nearly half its 2022 aggregate income in taxes, rising another 2.7 percent as of 2025. When it comes to taxes, especially Canada’s turbo-tax load, including value-added, carbon, excise and Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), the citizen’s loss is the treasury’s gain, whereas Carney’s gain is the treasury’s loss. Carney is a net-zero fanatic, but his business practices, investments and corporate deals ensure maximum net-yield. In other words, it’s net-zero for Canada, net-infinity for Carney. That is the essence of the prime minister’s fiscal calculations.”
CHANGE? Palestinian clans are looking to join Abraham Accords after Oct. 7.
It began with a sentence that sounded less like the opening of a diplomatic talk and more like the opening pitch at an accelerator demo-day. Economy Minister Nir Barkat – whose résumé lists two tech exits before it lists “mayor of Jerusalem” – stepped onto the Jerusalem Post Conference stage in New York and said he was tired of hearing that the West Bank was unsolvable.
If a product fails, he told the room, you either ship a better one or the market walks. His “product” was the Palestinian Authority; his better version was a Palestinian chapter of the Abraham Accords. “One day – hopefully soon – Arabs in Judea and Samaria will decide they’ve had enough of the PA and ask to join the accords,” he said.
“If they work with Israel, we’ll help them build Dubai. If they fight Israel, they’ll end up looking like Gaza.”
Phones came up like periscopes. The routine chatter about Saudi Arabia’s eventual normalization vanished. Barkat was talking about Rawabi, Abu Dis, perhaps even Jenin, not Riyadh or Jakarta.
In his model, clusters of West Bank towns would bypass Ramallah, plug directly into Israeli security and Gulf capital, and trade under commercial annexes adapted from the UAE-Israel playbook. No midnight shuttle diplomacy, no flags raised over Rose Garden lawns – just container IDs, escrow instructions and profit-and-loss sheets.
He refused to name which towns or clan elders were already whispering with him, citing the start-up rule that you “build outside the system and invite the system in only when the prototype runs.” But anyone who spends an afternoon in the industrial zones of Binyamin hears the same arithmetic Barkat hears: Gulf money is flowing everywhere except here; PA fees bleed local manufacturers; Israeli checkpoints, however resented, at least keep the road open.
LATER, BEHIND the scenes, Barkat showed me clear evidence – many local Palestinian leaders would consider signing the Abraham Accords.
Developing…
Why Harvard deserves it:
Harvard Students Who Attacked Jewish Classmate Rewarded with Honors and $65,000 Fellowship
Two Harvard students, Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, assaulted Jewish classmate Yoav Segev during an anti-Israel protest. Despite criminal charges, a judge dismissed the case in… pic.twitter.com/g3PynDOAZK
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) May 26, 2025
IT’S A REAL MYSTERY:
Dems:
“Working out is right wing”
“Liking hot girls is right wing”
“Eating red meat is right wing”
Dems today:
“We need $20 million to understand why young men hate us” pic.twitter.com/qI7rZLMoqa
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) May 25, 2025
Related:
“The erosion of working-class support — among Black, white and Latino voters alike — has unnerved every ideological wing of the Democratic Party.” “For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.”
Maybe the solution is to, I dunno, stop sucking. Or to stop being a party driven by batshit crazy liberal women. But I repeat myself.
HARVARD IS HAVING A BAD YEAR. OR MAYBE DECADE, I DUNNO. Harvard Medical School morgue manager admits to stealing organs, selling them on the black market.
Related: Harvard fires professor for fabricating research on dishonesty.
Like I said . . .