HOW MUCH LONGER WILL SACRAMENTO ALLOW THE HARSH LANGUAGE? The Only Bear Defense Still Legal in California Nat’l Parks: Horns, Bells and Harsh Language.

California is, well, California. Besides being America’s utopian ideal for the civilian disarmament industry, the left coast’s great minds work damned hard to ensure that even defensive measures are difficult to acquire or downright illegal. This is a place, for instance that tried (though thankfully failed) to ban civilians from owning body armor. Self-defense ammo is banned in San Francisco. We could go on, but the list is virtually endless.

But we can’t blame the ban on carrying bear spray in California’s national parks on Golden Staters. The parks are under the aegis of the National Park Service. The feds.

That’s right, if you’re going to be hiking, camping, or carrying a pick-a-nick basket into Yosemite or one of the other four national parks in Cali, don’t bring bear spray with you. It’s against the law. As ActiveNorCal notes, that usually comes as a surprise to visitors from normal states where carrying a (somewhat) effective defense against being mauled by a bear is just common sense.

What’s the rationale for outlawing bear spray?

“The reason it is banned comes down to the bears themselves. California’s national parks are home exclusively to black bears, which are far less aggressive than grizzlies. The National Park Service says bear spray is unnecessary for black bear encounters and that no one has been killed or seriously injured by a black bear in Yosemite’s recorded history.”

Oh. They claim you really don’t have to worry about California’s black bears. They’re just more docile there.

Heh.

TRUMP-XI SUMMIT:

Differences between U.S. & Chinese readouts on Trump-Xi meeting. U.S. mentions fentanyl, no to toll on Strait of Hormuz, buying U.S. oil, & opposition to Iranian nuke. China does not. China warns U.S. about Taiwan & says it is most important issue. U.S. doesn’t mention it at all. pic.twitter.com/sPJbdhPhPD

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) May 14, 2026

WELL, HE IS AND THEY ARE: The Secretary of State Is Cool, and the MSM Is Having a Meltdown Over It

CDR SALAMANDER: Carriers: Not Dead Yet, and Unquestionably not Unloved.

Ethan Gossrow over at Naval News did a detailed look at the carrier portion of the 30-year shipbuilding plan that gives some texture for those who, like myself, are concerned about the slow approach to bringing new carriers online.

Even though today is no different from any other day over the last half decade, there are those who will continue to try to explain why the USN’s CVNs are “obsolete” and not worth the investment. However, reality continues to get in their way, as he quotes from the Plan:

“Underpinning Expanded Maritime Maneuver (EMM) the CVN serves as a persistent, survivable, mobile sea base that enables the Navy to dominate contested environments and deliver decisive effects at ranges that outpace adversary anti- access/area-denial (A2/AD) envelopes without the need for Access, Basing, and Overflight.”

There is no other way to project national will anywhere on the planet like a CVN. There just isn’t.

Even though we are an 11-carrier navy in a 15-carrier world…we’re not growing.

Read the whole thing. I’d just add that if I had a dime for every time the carrier had been pronounced obsolete, I could almost buy one.

THIS IS MY STATE ON DEMOCRATS:

So let me get this straight…

Citizens get pissed that Colorado roads are held together with crack sealant, expired hopes, and orange cones from 2007, so they launch a ballot initiative to constitutionally force transportation money toward… you know… transportation.

And the…

— Colorado Unfiltered (@COUnfiltered) May 14, 2026

Exit quote: “HB26-1430 is basically lawmakers looking voters dead in the eyes and saying: ‘Aw that’s cute. You thought ballot initiatives still controlled government.'”

Not one more word about “democracy,” Democrats. Not one more word.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’m California Dreaming About Karen Bass Losing Her Job. “The wild card in the Los Angeles mayoral race is the unmitigated awfulness of Karen Bass. It’s nigh on impossible to put lipstick on the pig that is her legacy as mayor. Pratt has the money to keep attacking Bass for the duration. He may very well be able to inspire a flood of independent voters to propel him to victory. He’s so good at staying on message that some Democrats could shed their blinders. His potential path to a win is loaded with ifs, but the fact that he’s in the conversation at all is miraculous.”

WELL, GOOD: Overdose deaths fall for 3rd straight year amid a changing drug supply and funding cuts.

About 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year — about 14% fewer than the previous year, according to preliminary government data.

It was the third straight annual drop, making it the longest decline in decades, according to federal data released Wednesday. The 2025 total is about the same as the tally in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Declines were seen across a number of drug types, including fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Overdose deaths fell in the vast majority of states, although seven saw at least slight increases, including jumps of 10% or more in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, the preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that this represents really a fundamental change in the arc of the overdose crisis,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends.

It might be, like the crack epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s, fentanyl is beginning to run out of victims.

THAT’S A TELL:

UNBELIEVABLE. Vice President Vance just did a double take after hearing this wild stat dropped by Dr. Oz:

"You're saying that we kicked off 800 fraudulent healthcare providers off of the Medicare system and not a single one of them called the government and said, 'hey, you made… pic.twitter.com/EaJTz1lNoA

— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) May 13, 2026

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Maybe God Is in the Stars.

THAT’S (D)IFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

Here's Joe Biden calling a reporter he didn’t like “a stupid son of a bitch."

Normalized like that? https://t.co/dJK68wFNUP pic.twitter.com/pMSgGjr3Vm

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 13, 2026

Previously: The Biden staffer who locked a reporter in the closet.

YES: House Judiciary Chairman urges DOJ to permanently dismiss all Trump cases after bombshell report.

“It’s probably time that this all just ended,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Wednesday night after Just the News reported new documents it obtained revealed the FBI at the end of the Biden presidency secretly took the rare step of preserving evidence from a dismissed January 6 prosecution until 2030, raising alarm the bureau could revive its prosecution after Trump leaves office.

The agents in the controversial Arctic Frost case also wrote a new memo insisting they believed Trump violated laws, creating a fresh roadmap for prosecution after Trump’s presidential immunity from prosecution ends in 2029.

Jordan, who played a crucial role in debunking Russia collusion allegations against Trump and chronicling FBI abuses in the targeting of conservative figures since 2016, reacted to the report by saying Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche should declare “this thing is done, over with. A-B see you later.”

He said DOJ asking the courts to discard all prior prosecutions with prejudice — meaning they couldn’t be re-filed — was “the right approach.”

More at the link.

CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL… I HOPE: Biden Will Fight the Release of 70 Hours of Audio Tapes With His Ghostwriter From 2017.

AND ACCUSE YOU OF FASCISM FOR WANTING TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO REBUILD:

Democrats will burn your house down with incompetence, not issue the permits to rebuild it, and raise your taxes in the meantime, while attacking you for having to go live in a hotel.

You can't imagine how depraved that is. pic.twitter.com/KxinQo4XuS

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 13, 2026

BLUE CITY BLUES: Starbucks cuts more jobs in Seattle.

Starbucks is moving forward with a new series of 61 staff reductions in its corporate headquarters in Seattle.

All the layoffs are in the company’s technology department and are a result of a reorganization within that group, according to a notice filed with the Washington State Employment Security Dept on May 8.

Starbucks officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Starbucks announced last month that it is moving some Seattle technology teams to Nashville as part of the opening of a regional office there. The company has said its main office will remain in Seattle.

Company officials have said that the new regional headquarters will employ 2,000 employees, but have not said how many jobs will be moved from Seattle to Nashville.

Starbucks has around 3,000 corporate employees in Seattle.

For now.

ICYMI: Gooder and Harder, NYC: Mamdani’s Plan to ‘Nickel & Dime’ You to Death.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin may need external funding to hit ambitious launch targets.

Chief Executive Dave Limp told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company would require outside investment if it were to significantly increase its launch cadence, according to details of the meeting from two people who attended.

He said it would “take a lot of capital” to achieve the number of rocket launches Blue Origin has targeted—more money than would be available with “just one investor,” the people added.

Blue Origin has set ambitious launch targets after reaching orbit with New Glenn, a 98-meter-tall heavy-lift rocket, for the first time in January 2025. It is competing with SpaceX for large commercial contracts and to develop a lunar lander for Nasa’s Artemis program.

Blue Origin is considering fundraising as SpaceX, which dominates the space launch market, gears up to list on the public market as early as June, with a valuation in excess of $1.75 trillion.

Limp told employees Blue Origin would have to demonstrate strong economics but that external funding was one option “on the table,” the people added.

Where’s Jeff Bezos?

HANG IN THEIR KEIR, JUST LONG ENOUGH TO DRAG ALL OF LABOUR WITH YOU: The Starmer Drama Continues. “A rift is actively tearing the Labour Party to pieces. CNN reports that some 100 MPs signed a letter warning against a leadership contest — which Downing Street swears it didn’t organize. Yeah. Sure.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Colorado’s one-party rulers steadily chip away at democracy.

If democracy is truly hanging by a thread, then surely Colorado’s Democrat majority is heroically defending it. I mean, they say that’s their job one, next to banning ketchup packets (Senate Bill 146, seriously).

Which leaves me confused.

Because from my tiny little “just-a-citizen” brain perspective, they seem to spend an awful lot of time removing voters’ power, hiding meetings, dodging taxpayer consent and nullifying ballot initiatives.

Maybe I’m missing the advanced theory of democracy taught only in elite government seminars and overpriced Aspen retreats.

Take Senate Bill 150. It strips away two-thirds of RTD’s publicly elected board seats and replaces them with appointees.

Silly me. I thought democracy involved electing people.

But apparently true democracy is when insiders choose insiders to protect the public from the dangerous unpredictability of… the public.

Then there’s House Bill 1326, which exempts the all-powerful Public Utilities Commission from open meetings laws.

Again, I’m sure there’s a sophisticated democracy-enhancing explanation for this.

Perhaps democracy works best when the public cannot actually watch government decisions being made. Sort of a “trust us you peasants” model of self-government.

Read the whole thing.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Awful Truth: Donald Trump Must Look Over His Shoulder for the Rest of His Life.

THAT CAN’T BE GOOD: A Russian ship sank in mysterious circumstances. It may have been carrying submarine nuclear reactors to North Korea.

A Russian cargo ship likely carrying two nuclear reactors for submarines, possibly destined for North Korea, suffered a series of explosions and sank in unexplained circumstances, about 60 miles off the coast of Spain, a CNN investigation has found.
The extraordinary fate of the Ursa Major has been shrouded in secrecy since it sank on December 23, 2024. But it may mark a rare and high-stakes intervention by a Western military to prevent Russia from sending an upgrade in nuclear technology to a key ally, North Korea, CNN reporting suggests. The ship set sail just two months after Kim Jong Un had sent troops to assist with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

A flurry of recent military activity around its remains has deepened the mystery around its cargo and destination. US nuclear “sniffer” aircraft have flown over the sunken ship twice in the past year, according to public flight data. And its wreckage was also visited a week after it sank by a suspected Russian spy ship which set off four further explosions, according to a source familiar with the Spanish investigation into the incident.

The Spanish government has said little, only releasing a statement on February 23 after pressure from opposition lawmakers. It confirmed that the ship’s Russian captain had told Spanish investigators the Ursa Major was carrying “components for two nuclear reactors similar to those used in submarines,” and that he was unsure if they were loaded with nuclear fuel.

Not good, but still probably better than North Korea getting them.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

BREAKING:

Eric Swalwell buddy billionaire Stephen Cloobeck has been arrested on felony charges for attempting to keep a witness from testifying.

Cloobeck was allowing Swalwell to shack up at this mansion and film campaign videos there, before publicly turning on him when the… pic.twitter.com/4NSnID2BCq

— john jackson (@pvtjokerus) May 13, 2026

CLINTONISM ON STEROIDS: James Comey and the Deep State’s ‘Plausible Deniability’ Shell Game

GET OFF MY LAWN: Chrome Secretly Installing AI On Your PC. “It’s not just Microsoft is stuffing everything full of AI, whether or not its users want it. It is now Google as well with Chrome. Apparently, they’re stuffing AI into Google Chrome. They did not ask people. And according to Futurism, fury is erupting after Google Chrome sneakily installs a 4 gigabyte AI model on users’ PC.”

IF ONLY SOMEONE COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING: Gooder and Harder, NYC: Mamdani’s Plan to ‘Nickel & Dime’ You to Death.

REALITY BITES: Mamdani Drops NYC Property Tax Hike Plan.

The democratic socialist mayor is expected to formally abandon his proposal to raise property taxes nearly 10% after months of backlash from homeowners, business leaders, and even fellow Democrats worried the move would further damage New York’s struggling economy.

Mamdani’s executive budget instead will rely heavily on billions of dollars in additional state aid negotiated with Gov. Kathy Hochul to help close the city’s budget deficits, multiple outlets reported.

Hochul and Mamdani announced Tuesday that Albany approved another $4 billion in support for New York City, bringing total new state assistance to nearly $8 billion over two years.

So the state will bail out the city.