Archive for 2025

October 17, 2025

AN OPEN LETTER: Dear Vladimir,

I write this to you sincerely, though I doubt you know me or remember me from Adam’s housecat, as what may be one of the last overtly political posts on this blog. For all that I plan to talk about politics in some different contexts, my time in other discussions of politics is at an end as I move into a truly new life of Faith.

I hope you will get this, intact even, as there is still at least one person in the Kremlin openly reading me pretty much daily. And, yes, I know that was a bit of a message too. I was and am actually glad of it as I hope some of my messages got through, at least in part.

This really would be a great time for peace.

Much more at the link, of course.

Posted at 3:59 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

SHARKS GOTTA SWIM, BATS GOTTA FLY: Newsom Signs Another ‘Do Something’ Gun Control Bill That Will – Surprise! – Do Nothing. “In what shouldn’t surprise anyone, California Gov. Gavin Newsom used his pen to sign Assembly Bill 1127, which gun control activists deemed the ‘Glock Ban’. Gov. Newsom has never seen a gun control proposal he didn’t absolutely love. AB 1127 bans among the most commonly owned type of handgun available to law-abiding Californians, including GLOCK Gen3 pistols currently on California’s approved handgun roster.”

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Introducing Florida Quinceañero. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn all about Florida Quinceañero, how not to get to your doctor’s appointment, and why old, rich California Men shouldn’t date former 27-year-old hotties.”

Posted at 3:21 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

SPACE: Once unthinkable, NASA and Lockheed now consider launching Orion on other rockets.

The Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket have been attached at the hip for the better part of two decades. The big rocket lifts, the smaller spacecraft flies, and Congress keeps the money rolling in.

But now there are signs that the twain may, in the not too distant future, split.

This is because Lockheed Martin has begun to pivot toward a future in which the Orion spacecraft—thanks to increasing reusability, a focus on cost, and openness to flying on different rockets—fits into commercial space applications. In interviews, company officials said that if NASA wanted to buy Orion missions as a “service,” rather than owning and operating the spacecraft, they were ready to work with the space agency.

“Our message is we absolutely support it, and we’re starting that discussion now,” said Anthony Byers, director of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin, the principal contractor for Orion.

This represents a significant change. Since the US Congress called for the creation of the Space Launch System rocket a decade and a half ago, Orion and this rocket have been discussed in tandem, forming the backbone of an expendable architecture that would launch humans to the Moon and return them to Earth inside Orion. Through cost-plus contracts, NASA would pay for the rockets and spacecraft to be built, closely supervise all of this, and then operate the vehicles after delivery.

But the landscape is shifting.

SLS won’t be missed by anyone, except for certain contractors and their benefactors in Congress.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

HOMELESS, INC. REMAINS A PROFITABLE GRIFT:

Posted at 1:55 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

TEXAS: Democrat Sacrificial Lamb Steps Up To Be Slaughtered By Abbott. “Every four years, the Texas Democratic Party has to offer up a gubernatorial candidate to get slaughtered by the Republican nominee. Beto O’Rourke lost to incumbent Greg Abbott by over 800,000 votes in 2022, and Abbott’s two previous opponents, Lupe Valdez (2018) and Wendy ‘Abortion Barbie’ Davis (2014) didn’t even get that close. Davis was a state senator, and Lupe Valdez a Dallas County sheriff, and now another leftwing female official unknown statewide has decided to step up to the butcher’s block.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

BLETCHLEY PARK CONTINUES TO DECODE NEW FORMS OF HIDDEN RACISM: Yes, Taylor Swift is racist—just not the kind you think she is.

Is Taylor Swift racist? Yes.

Is she actively, explicitly anti-Black? a Trump supporter? pro-eugenics? I doubt it.

But that’s actually what worries me more: that there are so many liberal white women who move through the world never making connections between their whiteness and white supremacy.

In 1963, in Letter From Birmingham Jail, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes:

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’… Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

This is not a popular quote to post on MLK Day because it doesn’t comfort white people. Indeed, someone sent me a message on Instagram to let me know that positioning the quote “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate” in block letters over an image of Taylor Swift would result in people feeling “judged,” “attacked,” and “defensive.”

But the reason why that is, is because of how easy it is for people to position their whiteness as neutral, their liberalism as goodness.

But as Rev. Dr. King points out, the protectors of the status quo are not so much those on the far right, but those who purport to be left-of-center, but who remain moderate in their thinking and their actions.

Are flag-wielding, MAGA-shouting Trump supporters a problem? Yes. They’re horrifying. But the biggest obstacle in taking down fascism isn’t far-right extremists.

It’s “liberals.” It’s “progressives.” It’s “democrats.”

It’s folks with “BLM” in their bios who live in majority-white suburbs and send their kids to private school. It’s folks who claim to be allies to the queer and trans communities and then have gender-reveal parties when pregnant. It’s people who look at the United States’ descent into fascism and ask, “How did we get here?” It’s folks who compare their European ancestors’ immigrations to what Black and Brown immigrants are experiencing today, as if race is inconsequential.

It’s Taylor Swift – and the majority of her fans.

Taylor Swift is a white woman whose success relies on cultural narratives of the fragility and purity of white femininity, while practicing zero interrogation into her own whiteness.

And her fans run to her defense whenever that is criticized. “But she publicly endorsed Kamala Harris!” they press, not realizing that this proves the point: Moderate politics dressed up as leftism don’t stand a chance against far-right extremism, a lesson I wish the Democratic Party would learn.

In Wi$h Li$t, Swift cheekily admits that while most people dream of Balenciaga sunglasses and soccer contracts with Real Madrid, all that she – “the girl who has everything and nothing all at once” (Elizabeth Taylor) – wants is a simple life, the so-called American dream.

“I just want you / Have a couple kids / Got the whole block looking like you,” she sings about her fiancee, football star Travis Kelce.

People were quick to point out that, especially given the cultural climate, expressing a fantasy in which two Aryan-esque rich people populate a neighborhood with blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies is a little… insensitive, at best.

Obviously, Taylor Swift didn’t sit down to write a pro-white (not to mention, deeply cisheteronormative) line here; I don’t think she did, not in the slightest. However, pushing the idea of passing on one’s genes, in the context of whiteness, has history to it – history that the pop star who is often lauded for her genius (“her brain!”) has to be willfully ignorant of for this not to occur to.

What makes Taylor Swift dangerous isn’t that she writes lyrics that could serve as the background music to a pro-eugenics Sydney Sweeney ad. It’s that she lacks the self-awareness to see how those two things could be connected.

But of course, she probably does have the self-awareness to see how her music and Sydney Sweeney are related, since over a decade before the gnostics on the left were the only ones hearing the racist dog whistles in Sweeney’s jeans ads, they were the only ones who thought they could detect the white supremacist dog whistles in Swift’s music, and endlessly hounded Swift for clicks and grins.

UPDATE: Is this a great country, or what?

UPDATE (from Steve): Nose Ring Theory still holds.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 17th, 2025

BUT ALL THE VERY BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THAT ANTIFA WAS JUST AN IDEA: Two Alleged Antifa Members Charged with Terrorism-Related Crimes. “Federal prosecutors have charged two North Texas men, Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts, who are accused of helping orchestrate an attack on an ICE detention center in Alvarado. They are charged with providing material support to terrorists, attempted murder of officers and employees of the U.S., and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.”

Much more at the link from Jonathan Turley.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025

WAIT, WHAT?

Posted at 12:05 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 17th, 2025

“NOSE RING THEORY” STILL HOLDS:

Posted at 11:28 am by Stephen Green on Oct 17th, 2025
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