HERE’S ANOTHER PIC OF GOV. WHITMER IN THE OVAL OFFICE WITH TRUMP (At Least We Think That’s Her):

To boldly go where Monty Python has gone before:

UPDATE: And to boldly go where Waldo has gone before:

WE CAN BE HEROES, IF JUST FOR ONE PROMPT: What Is the ChatGPT action figure prompt?

Action figures — small, poseable dolls often modeled after superheroes or movie characters – are popular collectibles, especially for fans of Marvel and DC. With this new tool, you’re no longer limited to fictional icons. Now, you can see what your own collectible figure might look like.
How to make your AI action figure

Go to the ChatGPT website or app.

Upload your photo, then enter the following prompt:

“Use this photo of me to create an action figure of myself in a blister pack, in the style like a premium collectible toy. The figure should be standing up and have a relaxed, friendly smile. The blister pack should have a header with the text ‘[ACTION FIGURE NAME]’ in large letters and a subheading of ‘[SUBHEADING]’ below it. Include accessories in compartments to the side of the figure: [LIST OF ACCESSORIES].”

Not surprisingly, quite a few pundits had fun with this new feature last night, such as these from Gabriella Hoffman and Karol Markowicz:

(Yes, of course I tried it as well. But my ChatGPT action figure left me thinking that I had a bright future in Hollywood as J.K. Simmons’ stand-in.)

Also not surprisingly, while simultaneously generating loads of action figure versions of themselves, some lefty Websites are tut-tutting this new feature: The action figure trend is the latest way people are misusing the power of AI – and I wish I could stop doing it.

This is all good fun, but there are concerns.

First of all, AI image generation is not without cost. Sure, there’s the price of a ChatGPT Plus membership (around $20 / £16 / AU$30 a month), although you can generate around three images a day on the free tier, depending on current demand. Perhaps more importantly, there’s the cost of AI models like 4o.

A Queens University Library report claims, “Artificial Intelligence models consume an enormous amount of water and emit large amounts of carbon in their production, training, operation, and maintenance.” Another Cornell University study calls out AI’s growing freshwater use footprint, claiming “training the GPT-3 language model in Microsoft‘s state-of-the-art U.S. data centers can directly evaporate 700,000 liters of clean freshwater.”

If you don’t think these AI trends and the memes they spawn are attracting wide use, stressing the system, and possibly eating natural resources, just look at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s comments.

We have a joke in my house that every time we create one of these AI memes, it kills a tree. That’s hyperbole, of course, but it’s safe to say that AI content generation is not without costs, and perhaps we should be thinking about it and using it differently[.]

Self-styled environmentalists are burning Teslas on the eve of the 55th anniversary of “Earth Day,” so I’m not sure that’s much of an argument in 2025.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey of Hot Air emailed me his attempt at Mego-fication:

Reverse Jim Cramer tweeted his own appropriately-styled action figure:

And for completion sake, here’s my attempt from last night:

Like I said above, not sure what’s going on with the J.K. Simmons-ing of my chin, but it was a fun first effort. Chat GPT spat that image out in less than a minute; creating this sort of thing, with its fake blister-pack imagery, die-cut style background, the font work, and slightly plastic-y appearance of the “action figure” would have taken at least a half-hour to an hour of donkeywork in Photoshop.

UPDATE: Seen on Facebook:

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Fran City Attorney Sues More Tenderloin Stores for Being Gambling Dens, One Allegedly Selling Meth Over the Counter.

It’s getting to be a fairly common occurrence that SF City Attorney David Chiu prosecutes suspected illegal gambling dens in the Tenderloin, operating out of what appear to be normal corner liquor stores. This is generally because police find the location is home to telltale unauthorized gambling video games. But the Chronicle reports that Chiu’s latest lawsuits against four Tenderloin corner stores found that one of the stores was going well beyond illegal gambling.

At a store called Family Corner Discounts at Ellis and Jones streets, Chiu’s office announced Friday that “SFPD executed a search warrant and seized six electronic gambling machines, $4,456 of cash, a payment ledger, foreign tobacco products, merchandise on display for sale with CVS price stickers, and 50.8 grams of methamphetamine located under a display shelf.”

Just a few doors down from there, an SFPD search at a store called US Smoke Shop turned up five illegal gambling machines, a couple gun magazines, plus “loose leaf cannabis, pre-rolled cannabis joints, cannabis vape cartridges, and illegal flavored tobacco products.” And one sure has to wonder about the above November 2023 Instagram post from US Smoke Shop promoting “mushroom cereal bars” on the shelves.

“It is clear these stores are magnets for substantial illegal activity,” Chiu said in his announcement. “Drug dealing, gambling, fencing, selling contraband and illegal tobacco products—these stores are the Wild West. One store went as far as to store meth for sale under a display shelf.”

Take a tip from Oakland and close them down over excessive graffiti.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Mother arrested and held in cell for ‘confiscating child’s iPad.’

History teacher Vanessa Brown, 50, spent seven-and-a-half hours in a custody cell on March 26 this year, following a claim she had stolen two iPads which were traced to her mother’s house in Cobham, Surrey.

Yet it transpired that the two devices belonged to her daughters, and Ms Brown had merely confiscated them to encourage them to focus on their schoolwork, a fact Surrey Police has now acknowledged.

“I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now,” Ms Brown recalled.

“At no point did they [the officers] think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction for a moment, confiscating temporarily her iPads and popping over to her mum’s to have a coffee’. It was just a complete overreaction.

“It was thoroughly unprofessional. They were speaking to my mother, who is in her 80s, like she was a criminal.”

In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.” They certainly had a field day during lockdown, and absolutely miss the sugar high.

It certainly beats trying to chase actual criminals:

Earlier, from Glenn: What Policing Looks Like in Britain These Days.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: If One Wanted to Destroy the U.S. the Last Four Years Matched the Blueprint.

Barry’s third term was all about “fundamentally transforming” the US back into the Stone Age.

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN: Original Star Wars Cut Will Be Shown at a Theater for First Time in Decades.

A rare screening of the original 1977 Star Wars movie — complete with Han shooting first — will be shown at a theater in London this summer.

Since its release, Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope, as it’s now called, has undergone several controversial changes made by the film’s creator George Lucas. The original movie that sparked one of the biggest franchises of all time is now a holy grail for fans who want to watch the film as it first appeared in the 1970s.

The subsequent alterations made to the film are well-documented: Han Solo being shot at by the bounty hunter Greedo first, rather than the original in which anti-hero Han killed Greedo without being shot at. Then there is the addition of a CGI Jabba the Hutt who was only mentioned by name in the 1977 release. Fans have also complained about the color grading painted on re-releases.

But for those attending the British Film Institute (BFI)’s Film on Film festival in London, they are in for a treat. Star Wars will play not once but twice on the opening night on June 12.

* * * * * * * *

“I wanted to show the film to my kids, and I wanted them to see the original version that I enjoyed at their age,” writes Robert Williams on The Star Wars Trilogy website 4K77. “Not the one with the already dated-looking CGI, over-saturated colors, and a strong magenta tint.”

The Guardian notes that anyone wanting to see the original theatrical cut legally must find an out-of-print VHS release or a DVD bonus features from 2006.

Lucas has little sympathy for those who want to see his first version of the film telling the Associated Press in 2004, “I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.”

If Disney can restore and rerelease Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, the last Beatles movie, which had only been available for decades on badly duped copies of copies of copies the ancient VHS videotapes, surely they can find a way to bring the original version of the original Star Wars to streaming or Blu-Ray.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Direwolf of Wall Street Edition.

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: ‘Puppy Prozac’ surges tenfold as owners medicate anxious lockdown dogs.

Vets have reported a surge in the use of “puppy Prozac” as owners seek medication for anxious lockdown dogs.

Research has revealed a tenfold increase over the past decade in the number of dogs in the UK on fluoxetine, an antidepressant sold under the brand name Prozac when used in humans.

Fluoxetine increases levels of serotonin in dog’s brains and is licensed in tablet form to treat pets with separation anxiety, or those displaying forms of aggression.

Greater use of the medication reflects a wave of behavioural problems in puppies bought during the pandemic lockdowns, who were not socialised properly and struggled to be left alone as owners returned to the office.

Vets said that social media had contributed to a “mismatch between owners’ expectations and the reality of dogs being dogs”, creating demand for the drug.

In some cases, people wanted their pets to be “fur-babies” that stay quiet, and believed medical intervention was needed if dogs ran around, jumped up or barked too much, vets added.

As always, life imitates the earlier, funnier version of Saturday Night Live:

@digital.gods

Puppy Uppers and Doggie Downers #SNL #Laraine Newman #Gilda Radner

♬ original sound – DigitalGods

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Oakland Chinatown businesses say they’re getting fined thousands for graffiti on their own property. 

In Oakland, Chinatown merchants are raising the alarm after many are being hit with thousands of dollars in fines for graffiti on their properties.

Shirley Lou knows how this story goes. On any given day, the supermarket she manages is tagged. They paint over it and then it happens again.

“We cannot control. We clean up and they come again. So many times, but the city — I don’t know why they are charging me money,” said Luo, manager at Won Kee Supermarket.

On Tuesday, she tried to pay the latest fine of $500. The city told Luo she owes $3,000, which includes late fees.

“It’s not my fault. Not our fault. It’s somebody go to the roof and mark so many graffiti,” Luo said.

This is not an isolated issue. Throughout Oakland’s Chinatown, business owners are reporting thousands of dollars in fines for not painting over tags fast enough.

“We close at 4 o’clock when we go home, and we cannot watch people do things like that. We can’t. So, the city has to help,” said Susan Lam, Oakland business owner.

As Lawrence Person wrote in 2023, “Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = ‘Food Deserts.’” Oakland’s government attempting to push their grocery stores out of business is also guaranteed to make that happen.

For years, Oakland has ignored the taggers covering every surface of the city in graffiti.
Now Oakland is taking a stand, by fining businesses thousands of dollars for not removing the graffiti that the city stopped policing fast enough. pic.twitter.com/FNi0jS4WHb

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) April 11, 2025

THE NECROPHILIAC OF PELHAM ONE, TWO, THREE: The Worst Story of the Week.

The Times sub-headlined its news piece with truly remarkable framing: “New York’s subways have been the subject of debate, with politicians using them to paint the city as out of control and dangerous to residents and visitors.” Yeah, can’t imagine why. I can do no better than Liz Wolfe of Reason when she points out that “the subhed appears to be, uh, pretty backed up by the headline.”

Look, on any objective level this is a horrifying story. But I am determined to find the bright side of a story involving a thief sodomizing a corpse on the R train, because it is Friday, people, and we need good cheer on Friday. So . . . well, it at least beats the story of the poor woman who was immolated by an illegal immigrant psychopath while asleep on a different New York City train late last December. Yes, people died in both situations, but at least nobody was technically murdered this time. In Eric Adams’s New York, we must regard this as an improvement.

As Glenn wrote a few days ago, “Yes, public transit depends on a functioning high-trust civil society. Which lefties hate and undermine at every opportunity.”

All these people who love public transportation and trains and want to stick us in them could do more for their own cause by empowering police to lock up criminals and weirdos than anything else, but they’re ideologically unable to choose normal people over bad people and normal…

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 7, 2025

QUESTION ASKED: Did Douglas Murray break Joe Rogan?

Who gets to call themselves an expert? That’s the big question featured in a bruising episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Rogan hosts The Spectator’s Douglas Murray and the libertarian comedian Dave Smith. Murray accuses Rogan of opening “the door to quite a lot of people who’ve now got a big platform, who’ve been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind.”

* * * * * * * *

Murray also comes after Smith, who self-identifies as both a libertarian commentator and a comedian – monikers that other libertarians and other comedians would contest. Murray is aghast when he learns that Smith has never been to the Middle East. “You can’t time-travel but you can travel,” he says, after Smith points out that he’s not “been to Nazi Germany” either. “If you’re going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it… I think it’s a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. If you’re insistent that you’re an expert of some kind, or not claiming you’re an expert but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you’ve never seen any of this going on.”

I don’t agree that you have to physically visit an area to opine on it, but it certainly seems like quite a Kinsley gaffe for Smith to seemingly equate Israel with Nazi Germany.

BOLDLY GONE: NASA axes ex-DEI chief after giving her new job title in apparent effort to evade Trump crackdown: report.

A chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at NASA has been fired despite the space agency appearing to change her title in an attempt to spare her from President Trump’s executive order ending federal DEI initiatives, according to a report.

Neela Rajendra, one-time Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was terminated this week from her newly minted role as head of the “Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

“Neela Rajendra is no longer working at [Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. We are incredibly grateful for the lasting impact she made to our organization. We wish her the very best,” a mass email from lab director Laurie Leshin, obtained by the Beacon, stated.

Insert Clarkson Dacia Sandero meme here:

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

YOU DON’T WANT TO WEAR THE RIBBON?! YOU HAVE TO WEAR THE RIBBON!! The BBC expected contrition from Kemi Badenoch. It owes us an apology instead.

A totally bonkers interview in which BBC presenters interrogate a politician because she hasn’t watched a TV show… pic.twitter.com/qXWBOYXOV5

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) April 10, 2025

“Have you seen ‘Adolescence’?” Yes, Mein Fuhrer: but I’m starting to wish I hadn’t. Oh, to inhabit the world of Kemi Badenoch, who innocently went on BBC Breakfast imagining they’d talk solely about tariffs, China or thermonuclear war – the sooner it comes, the better – but was invited to review the telly instead.

“Have you watched ‘Adolescence’ yet?” asked Charlie Stayt. The “yet” was impatient, as if Charlie were tapping a baseball bat in his hand. Kemi is notorious for not yet watching the TV show everyone who works in TV is talking about – and when she replied that she still hadn’t and “probably won’t”, co-host Naga Munchetty looked tempted to call Prevent.

“It’s prompting conversations about toxic masculinity,” she said, plus “smartphone use… Why do you not want to know what people are talking about?”

“All important issues”, replied Kemi. “But in the same way I don’t need to watch ‘Casualty’ to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on.” BBC Breakfast’s viewers sat up in their hospital beds. Finally: someone speaks for reality! The only thing Kemi got wrong is that ‘Casualty’ has little to do with the NHS any more. Or medicine. I think it’s mostly about sex.

More here: Kemi Badenoch is right about Adolescence.

On BBC Breakfast, Naga Munchetty reacted to Badenoch saying that she had not seen Adolescence as if Munchetty was the Vatican’s scariest cardinal hearing that a Catholic had not been to confession. “Everyone” is talking about Adolescence, claimed Munchetty. Everyone! If you haven’t been talking about Adolescence, reader, then bloody well start. (Talk about Adolescence, I tell you. Why are you not talking about Adolescence? Talk about Adolescence, damn it!)

Clearly, journalists of Britain think that watching Adolescence is some sort of cultural obligation — as if it is the Queen’s funeral and the finale of The Sopranos rolled into one. Still, they keep forgetting what it actually is. Like the Prime Minister, Munchetty made the mistake of calling Adolescence a “documentary”. (Unfortunately, Badenoch picked up the tic and called it a “fictional documentary”.) Should the recurring nature of this mistake not have taught Netflixophiles something about the error of their ways?

To be clear, I am not for one moment suggesting that it is bad to watch Adolescence. Nor, indeed, am I calling Adolescence bad. I haven’t watched it — but not because I think it is unworthy of my time. No, I hate the groupthink that surrounds it. Suggest that I have to watch something — that I have to do so to be “in tune” with Britain, and to join the “national conversation” with the likes of Nick Ferrari and James O’Brien — and I am going to find an old WWF main event to rewatch.

In the early 2000, the DNC-MSM got their Underoos in a twist when President Bush told them he didn’t read their newspapers or watch their TV shows — he had staffers who did that for him, summarized the day’s news, and briefed him on what was most important. The BBC is going one better, asking the leader of the Tories why she hasn’t watched a fictional drama.

By the mid-2000s, since the left couldn’t be seen as promoting America’s War on Terror, it decided to go with that hoary old substitute, the Moral Equivalent of War, and obsess over radical environmentalism instead. In 2006, Julia Gorin wrote a column for the Christian Science Monitor in which she noted how inexorably tied together the two “battles” seemed at the time:

It’s a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming – at least that’s what some would have us believe.

Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. “I really consider this a national security issue,” says celebrity activist and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David. “Truth” star Al Gore calls global warming a “planetary emergency.” Bill Clinton’s first worry is climate change: “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it.”

Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV*. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you.

That’s why in 2004 we got “The Day After Tomorrow” – so we could worry about junk science that may or may not kill us in 1,000 years instead of the people who really are trying to kill us the day after tomorrow.

This is effectively what Adolescence serves for England’s establishment left, Brendan O’Neill writes:

All this talk of ‘public conversation’ is driving me mad. Munchetty told Badenoch she must watch Adolescence if she wants to ‘know what people are talking about’. I’ll tell you what people are talking about, Naga: ‘grooming gangs’. Those gangs of mostly Pakistani Muslim men who exploited and raped white working-class girls in towns around the country for decades. Once again, the government has let down the victims of those sick crimes, this time by saying it might not proceed with the inquiries it promised. And you want us to talk about a crime someone made up?

That those BBC hosts interrogated Badenoch about Adolescence the day after the government said it wouldn’t be holding inquiries into ‘grooming gangs’ is mind-blowing. Nothing better captures the aristocratic aloofness of the BBC, its unworldly disregard for our concerns, than the fact that it badgered Badenoch about a fictional crime on the day the rest of us were talking about the real crimes inflicted on working-class girls under the noses of mercilessly blithe officials. If a fictional assault on a fictional girl troubles you more than the horrors those real girls endured, you are lost. Your neo-religion has rendered you heartless.

Freud called it displacement.

UPDATE: Who cares if Kemi Bandenoch has watched Adolescence?

When Munchetty next interviews Sir Keir Starmer, will she ask him why he doesn’t watch – I am making an assumption here – Strictly Come Dancing? It has far more viewers than Adolescence, after all, and people talk about it a lot. Why does he refuse to know what people are taking about? Who does he think he is? The arrogance of the man.

What people are also talking about, and what Mrs Badenoch wants to talk about, is crime – real crime that happens to real people. But for Nick Ferrari, for James O’Brien, for Charlie Stayt and for Naga Munchetty – and whoever else has jumped on the bandwagon – what really matters is a fictional crime committed by a fictional character at a fictional school. How perfectly emblematic of our times.

In the old days, it required not accepting the premise of a question to drive leftist TV newsreaders insane. Badenoch has certainly hit upon an even simpler and more effective way of driving British TV hosts absolutely bonkers — don’t watch a fictitious TV show!

* Now the left are taking actual strikes at electric SUVs. Plus ça change. 

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Protesters Remain Unaffected By Trump’s Shower Head Deregulation https://t.co/nVWjdToW4U pic.twitter.com/0YUcX8KvSI

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 10, 2025

ANOTHER DISNEY ACTRESS SEEMS DETERMINED TO TANK HER MOVIE: Vanessa Kirby Confirms Fantastic Four: First Steps Explores Gender Politics With Sue Storm.

Kirby spoke with Entertainment Weekly saying, “If you played an exact ’60s Sue today, everyone would think she was a bit of a doormat. So figuring out how to capture the essence of what she represented to each generation, where the gender politics were different, and embody that today, was one of the greatest joys of this.”

The idea that Sue Storm was a doormat in the early Fantastic Four comics is ridiculous. In the second issue of Fantastic Four, she turns invisible and breaks herself free from a federal detainment facility.

Later in the issue she works with the team to take out the Skrulls who have been posing as them and framing them for various crimes.

As Michael Walsh tweets to the above headline, “Translation: Please don’t go see this movie.” And that’s too bad, because as I wrote in February, the Googie-inspired production design looked fun in the trailer. But hearing the words “Gender Politics,” instead of mindless summer popcorn superhero flick where everything blows up, does not promise a fun afternoon at the movies.

SHHH — MANY OF TRUMP’S CURRENT POLICIES WERE THE DEMOCRATS’, UNTIL OBAMA CAME ALONG:

how have I never seen this clip this whole time Trump just ran on the same immigration policy Hillary Clinton did 😂 https://t.co/OwKyRKAK7S

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) April 11, 2025

yep https://t.co/6kSMBUSXjt

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) April 11, 2025

Flashback: “Donald Trump should televise this Bill Clinton speech from 1995 and then simply state ‘I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message:’”

A TIME FOR CHOOSING: Nato’s 2023 military spending produced about 233m metric tonnes of CO2 – report.

Is NATO prepared to fight against Europe’s enemies, or merely wage the moral equivalent of war against global warming? I know which way I’m betting; as Richard Fernadez tweets, “The European desire to defend against Russia is hampered by its conviction that building up the military is a climate crime. Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort or tension that arises when someone holds conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. Classic symptoms of cognitive dissonance are: Anxiety, guilt, shame, or regret Feeling paralyzed in decision-making Difficulty recognizing the person you’ve become and feeling a lost sense of self ‘Trump! Why did you do this to me?’”

That’s been the left’s constant cri de coeur during the last decade.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Stephanopoulos Described Biden as ‘Heartbreaking’ After Interview.

They all knew. They. All. Knew.

We knew they all knew, too. It’s infuriating.

In his new book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, Chris Whipple claims that ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos described former President Joe Biden as “heartbreaking up close” after an interview in July.

The interview happened one week after Biden debated then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Biden dropped out of the race on July 21. He immediately endorsed his VP Kamala Harris.

More from The Washington Examiner:

The book’s author, Chris Whipple, described Biden’s appearance as “hoarse and semi-coherent” during the interview, in which Stephanopoulos asked his questions “gently, like a grandson.”

“Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close,’” Whipple wrote.

—

Whipple’s statement mirrors a story that spread after the Biden interview when a passerby asked Stephanopoulos if he believed the president should step down. The anchor appeared to respond, “I don’t think he can serve four more years.” The Washington Examiner’s Sarah Bedford contended that most people agree that Biden was not fit to serve another term and that such an assessment is “pretty apparent.”

Related: Stephanopoulos in June of 2024:

“We had a dry run in 2016, we saw more of it in 2020, it’s going to be worse than ever here in 2024,” George Stephanopoulos told the Deadline ElectionLine podcast this week regarding disinformation campaigns and tactics that are going to be unleashed on America as we get closer to this year’s general election in November.

Stephanopoulos was certainly correct; if only he know how accurately he described his industry during every presidential election year.

COVID FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY:

As Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times a few days later in 2020: When Coronavirus Lockdowns Go Too Far. The closures were necessary. Chasing picnickers and closing paint aisles is petty overreach.

The tweet shows two silhouettes, extending in familiar policeman shapes. The text is as cheery as a beat-walking bobby in an Edwardian children’s book: “If you think that by going for a picnic in a rural location no one will find you, don’t be surprised if an officer appears from the shadows!” And the message, directed in this case to the inhabitants of Central Bedfordshire in England, is an example of how even when they’re essential, anti-pandemic policies are always at risk of going a little bit insane.

I’m a skeptic, to put it mildly, of the skeptics of lockdowns and social distancing requirements. At best they make an argument for more speed and optimism in reopening*, not a case that there’s an alternative world where the American economy stayed open** and steady while the virus was killing more people weekly than car crashes, flu or cancer and New York’s monthly death toll was climbing above that of September 2001***.

But the skeptics’ determination to catalog every petty tyranny inflicted in the name of quarantine is an important public service — not just because overreach always needs critics, but because petty tyrannies today are obstacles to the adaptation we need to get to semi-normalcy tomorrow.

In response to the overreach of the Central Bedfordshire rozzers, James Lileks noted:

If you sneak off into the woods for a picnic, you could be killing people and crippling the NHS, so shadowy peelers should manifest themselves and issue tickets.

Turns out this wasn’t well received:

Utter nonsense. Huge stonking heaps of bollocks. Walking to the dunes for a picnic, or heading to the field off Potter’s Lane to enjoy the sun, is absolutely harmless, and everyone knows it, and it’s corrupting the trust people would normally grant the authorities. As I once wrote about small-minded public officials: “I don’t make the laws, sir, I just enforce them with a great deal of enthusiasm.”

Back in 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.” The lockdowns gave the British police all the excuse they needed to get their inner Mosley on.

* In retrospect, Sweden would like a word here.

** As John Hinderaker wrote at Power Line last year, “The New York Times looks back on covid, four years down the road, and says ‘Here’s what we’ve learned.’ I would say we have learned some things that the Times doesn’t touch, like the idiocy of shutting down stores, businesses, churches and, especially, schools.”

*** New York Times quietly admits COVID deaths were overcounted by ‘almost one-third.’

HOW IT STARTED: Space Force Commander in Greenland Sent Out Email Breaking with Vance After His Visit.

Just days after Vice President JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the installation commander sent out an email to the base distancing it from Vance’s criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory, Military.com has learned.

Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, sent a March 31 message to all personnel at Pituffik seemingly aimed at generating unity among the airmen and Guardians, as well as the Canadians, Danes and Greenlanders who work there, following Vance’s appearance. She wrote that she “spent the weekend thinking about Friday’s visit — the actions taken, the words spoken, and how it must have affected each of you.”

“I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S. administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base,” Meyers wrote in the email, which was communicated to Military.com.

The emailed remarks, confirmed as accurate to Military.com by the Space Force, mark a rare pushback within the ranks of the Trump administration’s repeated criticism and critiques of NATO members and longtime allies. A source familiar with the email said it was sent to all base personnel, including those from Denmark and Greenland on the installation.

How it’s going: “Colonel Susannah Meyers, commander of Pituffik Space Base was removed from command by Colonel Kenneth Klock, commander of Space Base Delta 1, on April 10, 2025 for loss of confidence in her ability to lead. Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties. Colonel Shawn Lee has assumed command.”

CURIOUSLY, HARLEY OWNERS AREN’T ALL THAT FASTIDIOUS ABOUT PRONOUN CHOICES:

Big News: Harley Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz is officially OUT as CEO less than one year after I exposed @harleydavidson’s woke policies.

Now let me tell you how we got to this moment.

After weeks of my reporting, they ended their crazy DEI policies but kept their woke CEO.

I… pic.twitter.com/HMjCzKvbI8

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) April 8, 2025

More here: Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz To Retire. Zeitz to remain at the helm until a successor is found.

HOW IT STARTED: Twitter Admits ‘Error,’ Reinstates ZeroHedge After Banning It for Calling Out China.

Twitter admits it wrongfully banned the site ZeroHedge, but its history of selective enforcement is still infamous.

The COVID-19 virus’s origins, lethality, and cures have been hotly debated throughout 2020, to the point where social media platforms have heavily restricted many users’ posts. As a rare exception, one website has been reinstated after users thought it was gone forever. “133 days after Twitter ‘permanently’ banned Zero Hedge on January 31, the social network has reinstated us after admitting it made an error,” skeptic outlet ZeroHedge revealed June 14.

Twitter previously banned ZeroHedge’s account for allegedly violating Twitter’s platform manipulation policy by theorizing about the Wuhan virus’s origins. The initial ZeroHedge article suggested that the mainstream narrative about coronavirus being spread thanks to some bat soup was a “fabricated farce.”

—NewsBusters, June 15th, 2020.

How it’s going:

As Kate of Small Dead Animals tweets, “I can’t wait for Karoline Leavitt to call on ‘Tyler Durden.'”

JEFF DUNETZ: Where’s Moses? A Passover Question.

During the Seder, we tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. But the Haggadah, the book that acts as the script for the Seder, only mentions Moses once. Only once? He’s the key human figure in the biblical Exodus story?     

Yes, THAT Moses… Prophet, miracle deliverer, G-d’s right-hand man, mountain climber, former tennis player, and a prince of Egypt. Former tennis player? Absolutely! The Torah says Moses served in the courts of Pharaoh.

Much of the Haggadah was put together by Rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It was created so Jews would have a guideline for the Passover Seders and to fulfill the Torah commandment to remember that G-d took our ancestors out of Egypt with a strong hand and outstretched arm.

Before the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, animal sacrifices were a big part of the holiday ritual, as required by the Torah. But those sacrifices were only allowed at the Beit Mikdash (the Holy Temple atop the Temple Mount). Sacrifices ended with the Temple’s destruction. Well, either the destruction of the Beit Mikdash or an anticipation that PETA would be created.

By the way, nothing in the Torah or Haggadah says that after the festival ends, Jews must have a week of leftover brisket after Passover. Sadly, it happens anyway.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC.

Anyone who has seen the BBC’s coverage of Gaza and Israel since October 7—among them the 1.1 billion people who look at the BBC’s news site every month, making it the most widely read on the planet—will have seen how slanted its reporting is. But the problem began decades before October 7, and it is now difficult—impossible, really—to argue the case I tried to make on that panel. The evidence suggests that the problem with the BBC’s coverage of Israel is far broader and stems from its attitude to Jews themselves. Even Danny Cohen, former controller of BBC One, the corporation’s main broadcast channel, now says the organization is guilty of “systemic problems of antisemitism and bias.”

Whatever the history, it has come to a head in a documentary broadcast by the BBC in February called Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone. Though it was ostensibly a piece of independent journalism showing the impact of the Gaza war on its 13-year-old narrator, within hours of its transmission, it emerged that the boy was in fact the son of a minister in Gaza’s Hamas government. Equally egregious examples of the distortions in the program were uncovered subsequently.

The discovery that Abdullah al-Yazouri, the 13-year-old, was the son of Hamas official Ayman al-Yazouri was the work of David Collier, a retired businessman who has turned his attention in recent years to online research. He says it took him less than three hours to find out the boy’s background. The BBC now says it asked the film’s producers, Hoyo Films, whether there were anything of concern about the boy and was told there was nothing. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone at the world’s (self-proclaimed) leading news organization that it should and could check for itself. Not a single one of its 5,500 journalists was asked by managers or editors to take a look at the film to check its bona fides.

That seems unlikely to have been a mere oversight. Rather, it is a byproduct of the mindset that dominates the BBC’s thinking. If your worldview is that Israel is by definition evil and Gazans virtuous, you will always be ready to accept anything that seems to buttress such a view.

Related: ‘Reverts?’ The BBC is spouting Islamist talking points.