I DARESAY IT WILL HURT, BUT IT’S A WAY TO INCENTIVIZE DOMESTIC PRODUCTION: Trump Imposes 25% Tariffs on Steel, Aluminum Imports.
Archive for 2025
February 11, 2025
SAY IT WITH ME “I REALLY DON’T CARE, MARGARET”: Weaponized Empathy vs the Vance Glance.
TLDR: NO: Does Africa Really Need USAID?
February 10, 2025
AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT UPDATE: Yes, we’re keeping busy. We’ve filed a Title VII administrative complaint against the ABA with the EEOC a few days ago. And we filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General against two public universities that operate race-specific scholarship programs. But most of our efforts are aimed at what I believe will be litigation with a major impact. With luck, I’ll be able to say more in a month or two about that. Stay tuned.
A FRIEND COMMENTS, “A WEIRD HILL TO DIE ON BUT SO LONG AS THEY DIE ON IT.” Liberal Analyst Warns Dems: ‘Suicide’ to Defend USAID.
Related: Thoughts from Kurt Schlichter on the injunctions.
Here is a long take on the court injunction crisis, which is less crisis than an opportunity…
OK, stop panicking about all the stupid legal decisions from leftist judges that the left is getting from judge shopping in leftist jurisdictions.
Stop. Panicking.
First, no one should…— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 11, 2025
Plus:
Listen Larry, we need to stop government spending like a drunken sailor on fraud & waste or America is gonna go bankrupt.
That does mean a lot of grifters will lose their grift and complain loudly about it.
Too bad. Deal with it. https://t.co/7mrwqDxyIc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Incompetent or crooked? Elon Musk exposing Washington’s rotten system. “Generally, when auditors find that an organization’s accounting system makes errors easy to commit and difficult to spot, they assume the system is designed that way because it is intended to facilitate fraud.”
METAPHOR ALERT: NASA expects to continue using electric vans it acquired to transport astronauts to the pad for Artemis missions even though the vehicles’ manufacturer has gone out of business. They should last quite a while; it’s not like they’re getting much use.
TRUMP WINS AGAIN: Electric-Focused Car Ads Absent from Super Bowl After Exploding on Biden’s Watch.
Donald Trump made history on Sunday as the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. The NFL celebrated Trump’s appearance by removing the phrase “End Racism” from the end zones for the first time since 2021, an acknowledgment of the president’s successful efforts to eradicate bigotry. It wasn’t the only thing missing from this year’s contest. In another promising development attributable to Trump’s leadership since taking office, there wasn’t a single Super Bowl ad touting electric cars as the vehicles of the future.
By contrast, seven different ads for electric vehicles ran during the Super Bowl in 2022, several months after President Joe Biden signed an executive order compelling U.S. automakers to ensure that by 2030 roughly half of all cars sold in the country would have fully electric or plug-in hybrid engines. General Motors, for example, ran an ad promising 30 new electric vehicle models by 2025, which turned out about as well as Biden’s promise to cure cancer. Six more electric-focused car commercials aired during the Super Bowl in subsequent years, including “Premature Electrification,” a Ram Trucks ad narrated by former Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones that compared being skeptical about electric vehicles to suffering from erectile dysfunction.
“How interesting,” said Larry Behrens, communications director of Power the Future. “Things have changed.” They certainly have. One of Trump’s first acts as president was repealing Biden’s executive order on electric vehicles. “With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers,” Trump said last month during his Inaugural Address. “In other words, you’ll be able to buy the car of your choice.”
On Sunday, only two automakers—Jeep and Ram—aired ads during the Super Bowl, and while both featured electric vehicles alongside gas-powered ones, they also channeled Trump’s remarks by emphasizing the importance of choice.
Speaking of Jeep: Why Harrison Ford is endorsing Jeep for Super Bowl 2025 ad.
Ford starred in a two-minute Jeep ad, directed by “A Complete Unknown” Oscar nominee James Mangold, and it was one of the night’s biggest surprises.
Set in a cabin in the wilderness, the earthy spot took advantage of Ford’s all-American quality.
“The longest thing we ever do is live our lives,” he began. “But life doesn’t come with an owner’s manual. Might’ve been nice, huh? But that means we get to write our own stories.”
The screen legend continued, with his signature dry sense of humor: “Choose what makes you happy. My friends, my family, my work make me happy. This Jeep makes me happy — even though my name is Ford.”
While Ford’s paycheck has not been revealed, the Hollywood Reporter said that major actors can command $3 to $5 million for a single Super Bowl ad, which cost $10 to $20 million to make.
Broadcaster Fox charged a record $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime during the big game.
Besides the brand name pun, Ford was a particularly inspired choice for Jeep, considering that while the leftist actor talks a good game when it comes to radical environmentalism, what actually makes him happy isn’t nothing of the sort: “‘I’m so passionate about flying, I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger,’ he said in 2010.”
WELL, GOOD: Radical Study Proposes a Single Cause to Explain Alzheimer’s Disease. Let’s get to a cure.
CHANGE: Trump’s all-out assault on woke is tearing down the left’s cultural sway. “The right just experienced its best three weeks in the culture war in 50 years.”
Related: The country has what can only be described as “bullshit fatigue.”
THIS WILL END WELL: Lyft to launch autonomous vehicle service in Dallas.
Rideshare company Lyft will bring another self-driving technology to the North Texas market, one of its co-founders announced Monday.
The company previously announced in November it would launch self-driving cars in Atlanta. Now, the company says its autonomous cars will be in Dallas by 2026, according to David Risher’s post on X. Lyft is partnering with Marubeni and Mobileye, a leader in self-driving tech and advanced driver assistance, Risher said.
In 2026, riders will be able to hail autonomous vehicles through the Lyft app and the company plans to expand the self-driving technology to other cities, Risher said.
“It’s all part of our promise to serve and connect, and we’re excited to have Marubeni along for the ride,” Risher said.
Several other companies have announced plans to bring autonomous technology of all shapes and sizes to North Texas in the coming years.
A year ago, KDFW-4, the Dallas Fox affiliate reported, “Dallas has worst drivers in Texas, ranked Top 10 for worst in the country: Forbes.”
Adding autonomous vehicles to the mix won’t help matters.
HOW IT’S GOING:
CNN: "We're living in a different world… 70% of Americans say Trump is doing what he promised to do."
Incredible.
pic.twitter.com/V0eAkwexji— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 10, 2025
GOOD QUESTION: Canned foods are convenient, affordable and nutritious. Why do they have a bad reputation? “Canned foods are not the villains they’re made out to be. These pantry staples are affordable, nutrient-rich and exceptionally convenient. They have a long shelf life, provide great value and can be a lifesaver when you’re scrambling to figure out what’s for dinner on a hectic weeknight. Of course, there are some caveats to consider when selecting canned foods, but if you shop wisely, they can be a powerful asset in your kitchen.”
I think it’s because they’re too dead-center middle class, associated with 1950s housewifery which we’re supposed to hate.
SPRINGTIME FOR KUTTNER: Liberal Magazine: Hitler Knew How to Fund Science, Unlike Trump.
Adolf Hitler was really a pretty good guy, according to the American Prospect. At least he knew that funding universities was a good investment and that scientific research was a national good. Donald Trump should be more like Hitler, don’tcha know?
No, I am not kidding. They really think America should follow the Hitler model when it comes to funding science.
* * * * * * * * *
Now, don’t get me wrong: American Prospect is not calling for a systematic purge of Jews from the scientific community, although no doubt many of their readers are on board with that idea since it would be a good way to “decolonize” academia. They just think Hitler had the right idea about pouring money into universities.
At least I don’t THINK that is what Robert Kuttner is arguing.
* * * * * * * * *
In Robert Kuttner’s world, Hitler may not have been the ideal leader, but he did have some good ideas. Look to the Nazis, he tells us.
Geez.
Curiously, he’s not the first contributor to the socialist American Prospect to go the “good ideas” route. That thought seems to cross the minds of its contributors once every decade, so they were definitely due:
Not everything the Nazis touched was bad. Hitler was a vegetarian. Volkswagen is a perfectly good car company. Universal health care is a perfectly good idea. Indeed, the Nazis actually did a pretty good job increasing economic growth and improving standards of living (they were, many think, the first Keynesians, adopting the strategy even before Keynes had come up with it), pushing Germany out of a depression and back into expansion. Unfortunately, they also set out to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jews. People shouldn’t do that.
—“Nazi Ideas,” Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, September 11(!) 2006.
Klein’s fellow TAP contributor and future Vox.com co-founder Mathew Yglesias tweeted in 2016:
As future Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg wrote at the beginning of 2001, “I’ve never met a real social-welfare state leftist who could answer the following question without having to think real hard: ‘Aside from the murder and genocide, what exactly don’t you like about National Socialism?’”
Related: From Newsalert in 2015: Flashback: When Comrade Robert Kuttner Was Honored By The Democratic Socialists of America.
Well, TAP seems determined on occasion to expand their socialism on an “unexpectedly” national scale!
HYBRIDS, NOT E.V.s, ARE THE FUTURE: Subaru Has Two New Hybrids—and It’s Only Getting Started.
NOT ONLY DID SPACEX SAVE TAXPAYERS $40 BILLION, THEY DID IT WHILE MAINTAINING PROFIT MARGINS IMPRESSIVE ENOUGH TO FINANCE THE DEVELOPMENT OF STARSHIP AND STARLINK:
The Pentagon said that @SpaceX has saved the government over $40B. One SLS launch costs billions. One SpaceX launch costs less than $75M.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell on SpaceX's $22B in gov contracts: "We earned that. We bid it, we were the lowest price, best bidder, we… https://t.co/itEesSLXHd
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 6, 2025
And if Starship achieves its goal of reducing the cost to orbit by one or two orders of magnitude…
ELON’S A BUSY MAN:
BREAKING: A group of investors led by Elon Musk have made a $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI, according to Elon's lawyer Marc Toberoff – WSJ
Elon: “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” he said in a statement provided… pic.twitter.com/XPnusA9S1L
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 10, 2025
President Trump has confirmed that under his controversial development plan for the war-torn Gaza Strip, Palestinians would not be allowed to return to the Hamas-run enclave.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing. Much better,” Trump told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier in a clip from the weekend interview that aired Monday morning on “Fox & Friends.”
“In other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could ever — it’s not habitable,” the president went on. “It would be years before it could happen.”
Whatever happens, I hope they have much better plumbing:
ROGER SIMON: Deep State May Emerge as Greatest Financial Ripoff in World History.
Government spending transparency has simply not existed in any of our lifetimes, not even remotely. The legislators themselves have little idea on how money they authorize is ultimately spent. Most apparently don’t care—at least they act as if they don’t—as long as their patrons get their portion of the payout.
This especially goes for so-called liberals and progressives, even though they won’t admit it, whose pet projects have been secretly funded to astonishing degrees through cutouts and other means but with the money almost always used to line pockets (cf. Samantha Power, but she’s the least of it. NGOs in general have become the new featherbeds, far more lucrative than ever.)
No wonder we are in the midst of a Democrat legal hissy-fit with some union bosses (who better?) having found the usual complaisant judge, resembling a third-level Mafioso, to do their bidding, putting a hold on the investigation or part of it. It won’t last for a simple reason. The cat is finally out of the proverbial bag and the American people have already seen what has been going on—enough of us anyway.
The Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot here, seemingly having lost their ability to read public opinion. Anger can do that to you. Also they are fighting those nasty little things, facts and truth.
Related: Dems Threaten To Shut Down Govt To Stop Trump From Cutting Govt Programs.
BUT THE GREAT REPLACEMENT THEORY IS JUST A MYTH, RIGHT? RIGHT?
LEFT, OCT 2024: As the election neared, KJP assured Americans that no FEMA funds were being diverted to Illegals.
RIGHT, TODAY: Elon exposes that FEMA still sending taxpayer dollars to illegals — just LAST WEEK having sent $59M to illegals for luxury hotels.
More lies. pic.twitter.com/eSw90bWgT7
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 10, 2025
The federal bureaucracy was weaponized against the people it was supposed to serve. But payback’s a… you know.