YOU’D BE AMAZED IF THERE WASN’T ONE: Hold On — Was There a Dirty Quid Quo Bro for Graham Platner?
Author Archive: Stephen Green
July 10, 2026
SMART: US Navy Issued RFIs to Korean Shipbuilders for Destroyers and Oilers. “The United States Navy has formally requested information from South Korea’s leading shipbuilders regarding their capabilities to quickly build destroyers and oilers, according to media reports in Korea. The Korean news agency Yonhap revealed that the U.S. Navy had issued requests for information last month, marking the first formal requests since South Korea launched its “Make American Shipbuilding Great Again” commitments.”
It sucks that we can’t do this domestically any longer — or at least no time soon — but this is where decades of bipartisan neglect by lawmakers and bad planning by the Navy have left us.
HIS LEGACY HAS CERTAINLY AGED BETTER THAN MORE RECENT PRESIDENTS WHO LEFT WITH HIGHER POLL NUMBERS:
Nixon will be vindicated, been saying it for years https://t.co/o7wTAPHa9x
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) July 9, 2026
OR MAYBE THE DOG WILL EAT HIS HOMEWORK: Platner privately told staff he’ll formally exit Senate race Monday.
Graham Platner privately told staff that he is planning to officially file paperwork to end his Senate campaign on Monday — the drop-dead deadline for him to exit the race.
Why it matters: Though Democrats largely appear to think Platner is done with his bid, his last-minute timing is likely to cause a final pang of anxiety within the party.
Driving the news: Platner made the comments to his team Wednesday night shortly before he announced publicly he was suspending his campaign.
It seems unlikely, but I sure wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow managed to accidentally miss the deadline…
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE COULDN’T BE BOTHERED TO LOOK UP FROM ITS BOOK:
Hahaha @nytimes doubles down https://t.co/pYeFRs682c pic.twitter.com/2VVogBQtwN
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 10, 2026
COLD COMFORT — AT BEST: It Looks Like the Democrats Have Been Sending Their Best All Along.
MAYBE BARI WEISS HAS MADE SOME REAL CHANGES AT CBS NEWS:
CBS News anchor tells viewers Democrats dropped Platner because he was looking 'like a loser' https://t.co/go1sW5WHLJ pic.twitter.com/Z1knUPDJyV
— Chris 🇺🇸 (@Chris_1791) July 10, 2026
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Let’s Trigger Lefties With Talk of a Third Term for President Trump. “I continue to marvel at not only how much President Donald Trump has on his plate, but also at the vigor with which he deals with it all. Yes, it’s true that presidents tend to have a lot on their plates, but this president has extra helpings because of the nightmare that preceded him in the Oval Office.”
STEPHEN CLARK BURIED THE LEDE MORE THAN HALFWAY DOWN ON THIS ONE: Payloads used to dictate the terms of launch. That’s finally changing.
A new report from the Aerospace Corporation helps elucidate why satellite companies are optimizing for Starship. It’s big and reusable, and once operational, it could cut the cost of launching a kilogram of payload into orbit by an order of magnitude from the Falcon 9. This means costs could come down from a few thousand dollars per kilogram to a few hundred.
Karen Jones, a space economist and lead author of the paper, said her research supports some of those optimistic cost projections. She outlines three scenarios, two of which assume an initial launch cost of $100 million for each fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy booster, with marginal costs of 20 or 35 percent. This is in line with the marginal costs of the smaller, partially reusable Falcon 9, which SpaceX can launch for as little as $15 million per flight on a dedicated Starlink mission.
This would bring the per-kilogram launch cost for a fully loaded Starship down to $133 to $233 after 10 reuse cycles. A more optimistic scenario with a $50 million initial launch cost and 20 percent marginal cost would reduce payload costs to $67 per kilogram for a Starship/Super Heavy launch at full capacity after nine use cycles. That’s less than it costs to fill the gas tanks of most SUVs. If SpaceX can make these more optimistic ambitions a reality, it would validate a claim made by Elon Musk in 2022 that a Starship flight could eventually cost as little as $10 million.
“I actually thought I would basically disprove that [claim], and on my first try, I got to $67 per kilogram after nine use cycles,” Jones told Ars. “It’s based upon some significant assumptions in the paper, but it’s not something that’s completely crazy. It certainly wouldn’t be something they’d reach on the first few times, on their first model; but over time, and with a learning curve, why not? I think it’s possible.”
As veteran aerospace engineer Will Collier reminded me recently, “These [Wall Street] analyst dweebs just have no clue what daily orbital access at under $100/kg means.”
Indeed.
NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR:
It isn’t science fiction, it’s our next mission.
Our Mission Robotic Vehicle will soon head to orbit, making space house calls to satellites running low on fuel and installing satellite “jetpacks” to extend their service lives by up to eight years.
It’s never been done before,… pic.twitter.com/bKmIkHe8cJ
— Northrop Grumman (@northropgrumman) July 9, 2026
BEEGE: Bari Bruising 60 Minutes Egos Again, But I Like the Backstory. “The monster has emerged from her lair to once more interfere with a 60 Minutes assignment, and heads are exploding. An interview of Nigel Farage that was to have been conducted by veteran correspondent (and, believe me, partisan witch) Holly Williams was suddenly taken from her and reassigned to some new guy.”
THE NEEDS OF THE PARTY ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, COMRADE:
This is amazing.
Scott Galloway on Elon Musk's "nazi salutes" (which didn't actually happen) vs. Scott Galloway on Graham Platner's nazi tattoo.
What a broken mind. What an absolute clown. pic.twitter.com/iP3zcEj4Iq
— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 9, 2026
SHE’S OBJECTIVELY PRO-TERRORIST. NEXT QUESTION? Why Is Ilhan Omar Making It Harder to Hit Terror Groups?
July 9, 2026
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Two Huge Reasons Why Emmys Have Become a Joke.
Watch any episode of “Landman,” and you’ll come away with one thought.
Billy Bob Thornton is as good as it gets.
The veteran actor’s turn in the Paramount Plus show is everything binge-worthy TV should be – smart, compelling, unpredictable and engaging.
You can quibble about the rest of the program, and some do. Loudly. Thornton’s performance is sublime.
Not to Emmy voters, apparently.
The main thing that keeps me coming back to “Landman” is that in every scene with Billy Bob Thornton, the writers give him at least one perfect Billy Bob Thornton line.
But do read the whole thing, which is really about the not-so-amicable divorce bettwen Hollywood and Taylor Sheridan.
ICYMI: SHOCK REPORT: The New York Times Almost Has Standards. “Not that exact piece, you say? So — there is some version of Kristof’s baseless canine consent irregularities story that Kahn’s news division would have run? Help me out here, because I’m a little confused.”
UGH: In the post-literate society … Look! A meme!
The End of Reading is Here, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Everyone’s reading less — if you don’t count Instagram captions — and people who do read are choosing shorter and shallower books.
The best-selling novel of 1958 was the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, she writes. Last year, the top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series.
Adults are choosing young-adult fiction and romantasy (romance and fantasy). School librarians are stocking graphic novels and manga to match students’ lower reading levels and shorter attention spans.
In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.
Reading is fundamental, they told me. And it still is.
SO STILL NO ARREST FOR THEIR FIRST OBAMA? Remember Andrew Gillum? The Democrats’ Next Obama Just Got Arrested Again.
I HATE THOSE THINGS: Wind Turbine Blade Dump Disposal Drama (Plus A Modest Proposal).
Wind turbine blades are made of fiberglass, which is very hard to recycle. Basically you have to shred them up, melt them and then pour them into new molds. Evidently Global Fiberglass Solutions just thought they’d take the same shortcut so many municipalities have by simply omitting the expensive “recycling” part of the recycling cycle.
But because I’m a waste-not, want-not sort of guy, I have a modest proposal to solve the dilemma of having too many wind turbine blades: use them for segments of the border wall.
Maybe sharpen them first.
I’M SORRY, THEY SPENT HOW MUCH ON WHAT? Come Meet California’s Million-Dollar Eco-Friendly Sidewalk Square.
WELL, GOOD: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers.
In a call for industry pitches, the Defense Innovation Unit’s notice described the US military’s current reliance on drones and crewed aircraft, each costing more than $30 million, as being “unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities.” It envisions deploying more “cost-effective” drones to “overwhelm enemy air defenses even while experiencing numerous [drone] losses.”
That is, in practice, what Ukraine’s military has been demonstrating with its long- and mid-range strike campaign against Russian supply lines, oil refineries, and various energy or industrial targets within Russia or occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian campaign has been overwhelming Russia’s overstretched air defense capabilities by launching hundreds of relatively inexpensive drones and missiles on a daily basis to attack targets far behind the frontlines, while continuing to damage or destroy Russia’s most sophisticated air defense systems.
Maybe the Pentagon is waking up to the new reality.
FASCINATING:
Consistent with the simulation hypothesis.
Like a video game, objects are randomly generated, with positional certainty only when observed. pic.twitter.com/8SUIqjJ8oC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2026
PROFILES IN COURAGE: So NOW Jon Ossoff Wants to Denounce Graham Platner — Kinda Sorta.