MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR WESTERN COUNTRIES TO WIN WARS IS THE GOAL:
Something at work here is the bizarre international legal regime of today, which makes it basically impossible for Western countries to win wars.
At any other point in history, including some as civilizationally advanced as our own era, Israel would simply have said: "An ancient… https://t.co/mOzTSQmwV0
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) May 25, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Announcement: The Babylon Bee Is Now A Full-Service Restaurant And All Our Writers Are Compensated Entirely With Tips.
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Babylon Bee is no longer a satire website. After months of strategy meetings and lots of thinking really hard, we have decided to pivot to becoming a full-service restaurant empire. In light of this change, all our writers and other staffers will now be known as “waiters,” “busboys,” and “food-making guys,” and will be compensated entirely in “tips.”
This compensation plan, created without any kind of intent to avoid income taxes or otherwise skirt federal tax laws, is ultimately the best compensation structure for our employees. After lengthy discussion with our staffers, they expressed their desire to be compensated with tips rather than salaries or hourly wages, citing factors like being better motivated by tips and a sense of satisfaction when a customer tips them.
Heh, indeed.™
GAVIN NEWSOM CANNOT ESCAPE HIS EMBARRASSING LEGACY ON HOMELESSNESS:
California Governor Gavin Newsom would very much like to be president. As one of the Democratic Party’s more charismatic leaders, he certainly has a shot. But Newsom’s presidential ambitions are burdened by the sorry state in which his leadership has left California — the cost of living is sky high, crime is out of control, and the middle class is disappearing. His constituents are voting with their feet, the largest percentage finding refuge in the two states Newsom loves to ridicule: Texas and Florida
Homelessness is perhaps the greatest albatross around the governor’s neck. With 187,000 homeless persons, California has one-quarter of America’s homeless population. A staggering two-thirds of homeless Californians are unsheltered. (RELATED: Will California Go Forward or Backward on Homelessness?)
But Newsom wants to assure every decent American that California’s homelessness crisis is not his fault. At least, that seems to be the subtext of his recent statement calling out California’s cities for not doing their part. “Local leaders asked for resources, [and] we delivered the largest state investment in history,” the governor announced. “The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”
But “resources” and “investments” aren’t the issues here, of course. In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”
Flashback: Gavin Newsom’s 10-year plan to end San Francisco homelessness marks 20-year anniversary.
OH, THAT WAR ON MEN: Jake Tapper Says Liberal Podcaster Made Racism Jab After He Revealed Son Wants To Be a Cop: ‘This Is Why You F**kers Are Losing Elections.’
Tapper and his Original Sin co-author Alex Thompson joined Scott Galloway on The Prof G Pod on Thursday, and Tapper at one point recounted how a left-leaning podcaster made a racism jab about his son after Tapper revealed he wanted to go into law enforcement.
“My son is now 15 years old, and he’s a gamer. He’s a football fan, starting linebacker on his varsity football team. The Democratic Party has no way of communicating with him. They have no entree into his world,” Tapper said during a discussion on the Democratic Party’s struggles to reach young men.
The CNN anchor would not name the podcast he was referring to, but said he received an odd reaction after revealing his son’s intentions, simply saying it was a “left-leaning podcast that shall remain nameless.”*
Tapper and Thompson have visited numerous podcasts across the political spectrum while promoting their book, which focuses on former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline in office and the efforts taken to keep it hidden from the public.
“Their joke was about my 15-year-old son, ‘Oh, how does he feel about minorities?’ Like the idea that he wants to be a policeman, therefore he’s, he’s racist, my son. And like, you know, that was the big laugh. And then I got dragged in the comments and all that stuff and, and I thought to myself, ‘This is why you fuckers are losing elections,’” Tapper said.
“One hundred percent,” Galloway agreed.
Tapper argued terms like “toxic masculinity” are thrown at young men who have “worlds” that don’t center on politics.
“He’s 15. He thinks about World War II and gaming and playing linebacker, that’s his world,” Tapper said about his son. “You’re deciding he’s a racist because he wants to be a cop. And why does he want to be a cop? He wants to be a cop because he wants to help people, you know, and he thinks that’s the best way he can help people. And that’s how the Democratic Party talks to men, not just white men, but men.”
The New York Post notes today that, “This group is now the loneliest in the US, poll reveals — inside the shocking ‘epidemic:’”
A new Gallup poll has revealed that American men are the loneliest people.
To conduct their poll, researchers collected data from 2023 to 2024 — and discovered that US Gen Z and millennial men are the loneliest (25%) compared to only 18% of American women in the same age group.
That means that one in four American men under 35 feel more isolated than their peers in other countries — including France, Canada, Ireland and Spain.
* * * * * * * *
This common feeling of isolation “is the coming to a head of a set of forces that have been in existence in boys’ and mens’ lives for generations,” psychologist Michael Reichert, founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men” told Fortune Well.
And what exactly is causing today’s generation of young men to feel so secluded from the outside world?
According to experts, it’s from a variety of things.
Justin Yong, a New York City psychotherapist, told Fortune that men are disconnecting from the rest of the world thanks to toxic digital occupiers like gaming and porn that “give this short term dopamine hit and relief that replaces real intimacy and acts as a barrier to being vulnerable to how they might be feeling.”
Another ongoing issue among young men is “societal norms around what it means to be a man,” Yong told the outlet.
“The problem, of course, is that when they became less authentic, they alienated themselves from even their important relationships, feeling that they had to hide a part of themselves because the world didn’t want that from them… Beginning at age 4,” Recihert said.
Fortunately, Democrats have a plan to reach this group:
Because Gorillas in the Mist-style communication between the far left and the rest of the country has always worked so well in the past.
* As with Original Sin, which is loaded with unnamed sources, lest Tapper and Thompson cause Obama and Biden-era retreads potential jobs in future Democrat administrations, Tapper doesn’t want to risk a lefty podcaster being shamed, either.
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BAD NEWS FOR PHONE ADDICTS: Being Bored Could Actually Be Good For Your Brain, Scientists Reveal.
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES:
.@MayorofSeattle Bruce Harrell has released a statement written by @jamiehousen, his director of communication, condemning the Christians for holding a worship event at a public park in the city. The event was violently attacked by Antifa and Trantifa.
The mayor says he is… https://t.co/TJvxoW6fzF pic.twitter.com/i6AKpfRiNe
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 25, 2025
They have an absolute right to pray in public places and the city has a duty to protect them from violence.
If it won’t do so, they have the right to protect themselves. Next time, show up with axe handles and shotguns.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Researchers Reveal Two Simple Eating Habits That Lower Weight.
USA TODAY: George Floyd’s legacy under siege as racial justice efforts lose ground, memorials removed.
While some work to preserve memories of the movement, others have found symbolic and substantive ways to try and erase it.
One by one, memorials to Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement have come down in recent years, including in Washington; Des Moines; Indianapolis; Salt Lake City; Santa Barbara, California; and Asheville, North Carolina.
Well, I hope they’re using tried and true methods that were approved by good ol’ Popular Mechanics magazine in June of 2020: How to Topple a Statue Using Science. Bring that sucker down without anyone getting hurt.
Additional helpful suggestions were published in June of 2020 as well: Professor of ‘art crime’ instructs protesters on better way to topple statues that offend them.
Exit questions:
WE CAN HOPE: Medical errors are still harming patients. AI could help change that.
Over 20 years ago when Helen had her heart attack, I took her to the ER. The “expert system” — not even any sort of AI back then — on the EKG machine said “possible recent MI.” The two cardiologists ruled that out as false positive because Helen was slim, athletic, and young. They were wrong, the machine was right. It was months before she was properly diagnosed. So I believe this.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: These Are the 15 Midsize SUVs With the Most Cargo Room.
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SHE’S NOT BIG ON GIVING THOUGHT: Maybe Justice Sotomayor Hasn’t Given Much Thought to the Historical Lessons of Gun Confiscation in America.
MAYBE WE SHOULD LOOK MORE CAREFULLY:
I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction.
The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg…
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) May 25, 2025
I’ve seen a few claims making the rounds on the Big Beautiful Bill that require correction.
The first is that it doesn’t “codify the DOGE cuts.” A reconciliation bill, which is a budget bill that passes with 50 votes, is limited by senate rules to “mandatory” spending only — eg Medicaid and Food Stamps. The senate rules prevent it from cutting “discretionary” spending — eg the Department of Education or federal grants. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory. The bill saves more than 1.6 TRILLION in mandatory spending, including the largest-ever welfare reform. A remarkable achievement.
I’ve also seen claims the bill increases the deficit. This lie is based on a CBO accounting gimmick. Income tax rates from the 2017 tax cut are set to expire in September. They were always planned to be permanent. CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit. The bill’s spending cuts REDUCE the deficit against the current law baseline, which is the only correct baseline to use.
Another fantastically false claim is that the bill spends trillions of dollars. This is just completely invented out of whole cloth. This is not a ten year budget bill—it doesn’t “fund” almost any operations of government, which are funded in the annual budget bills (which this is not). In other words, if this bill passed, but the annual budget bill did not, there would be no government funding. Under the math that critics are using, if we passed a one paragraph reconciliation bill that cut simply 50 billion in food stamp spending, they would say the bill “added” trillions in spending and debt because they are counting ALL the projected federal spending that exists entirely outside the scope of this legislation, which is of course preposterous. The only funding in the bill is for the President’s border and defense priorities, while enacting a net spending cut of over 1.6 TRILLION dollars.
The bill has two fiscal components: a massive tax cut and a massive spending cut.
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JONATHAN TURLEY: The justices must at long last deal with ‘chronic injunctivitis.’ “The court has long failed to address the problem, and what I call ‘chronic injunctivitis’ is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions.”
OF COURSE NOT: Trump’s Golden Dome, and Why the 1967 Outer Space Treaty Is No Obstacle to It. “The Outer Space Treaty is outdated and has greatly limited human development of space. But it’s no impediment to Donald Trump’s missile shield, no matter who claims otherwise.”
The Chinese want to ban it with vague international law mumbo-jumbo because they can’t compete on this front and they saw what SDI did to the old Soviet Union.
YES, I TOO, OFTEN CONFUSE JAKE TAPPER AND LAURENCE HARVEY: Dems are mad about Biden book. Jake Tapper must be a deep undercover MAGA agent.
It’s been a big week for news about former President Joe Biden.
On May 20, a book detailing Biden’s decline hit the bookshelves. And only days before, Biden announced he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
All of it has sparked intense speculation among the media and political leaders. “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, lays out in detail the lengths to which Biden’s family and closest aides went to try to hide the president’s true condition.
And thanks to a cooperative legacy media, the Biden cover-up went as planned until he showed the world just how bad things were at the June 2024 debate with Donald Trump.
Yet, even now, after so much attention and reporting on what Biden and Democrats attempted to keep from the American people, some in the media and many on the left are offering surprising takes.
Take this post on X from The Daily Beast, for example: “JD Vance wasted no time sharing his concerns that the former president was not ‘capable of doing the job’ while in office − fueling the MAGA conspiracy about a ‘cover-up’ of Biden’s health.”
The Daily Beast was responding to an answer Vance gave about Biden’s cancer news.
Or consider this observation from NBC News: “An initial wave of bipartisan sympathy for Biden’s cancer diagnosis has given way to suggestions from Trump’s allies that the former president’s inner circle masked his condition while he was in office to create an illusion that he was still up to the job.”
If the cover-up of Biden’s deterioration was a “MAGA conspiracy” by “Trump’s allies,” one must conclude the following: Tapper – and Thompson by association – are deep undercover MAGA agents.
It’s laughable, I know. But it’s essentially what Democrats and the liberal media are alleging.
It’s a safe bet that thinking that Tapper is the second coming of the Manchurian Candidate will fade rapidly once this box ticking exercise is concluded, and Tapper, Thompson and the rest of the DNC-MSM start obsessing over the health of Trump, soon to be 79, over the course of his second term.
TOO GOOD TO CHECK: Brazilian tribe sues for £113million after claims they became addicted to porn after Elon Musk’s Starlink system gave them access to high-speed internet.
But note who’s getting sued here:
An indigenous Brazilian tribe has sued the New York Times over a report which claimed they had become addicted to porn after Elon Musk‘s Starlink system gave them high-speed internet access.
The Marubo tribe from the remote Javari valley, who existed in small huts scattered along the Itui River for hundreds of years, filed a defamation lawsuit seeking at least £133million ($180million) in damages this week at a Los Angeles Court.
It also names TMZ and Yahoo as defendants, alleging their stories amplified and sensationalised the report for The Times and further tarnished the 2,000-member tribe.
The suit claims the June 2024 NYT story by reporter Jack Nicas on how the tribe reacted to the satellite service introduction ‘portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations their youth had become consumed by pornography’.
Buried lede: Lionel Hutz is alive and well and living in the Brazilian rainforest!
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ATOMIZED AMERICA: Young Shoppers: Avoiding People Is the Point. “A recent consumer survey by GoDaddy compares the shopping habits of younger and older Americans. The results show a generational divide: Millennials and Homelanders favor remote, contactless interactions, while Boomers and Xers lean toward in-person, social experiences.”
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