CHRIS QUEEN: Michael Ledeen, 1941-2025.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 22, 2025
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starfish Space announces plans for first commercial satellite docking. “Starfish Space is hoping to prove the concept of being able to dock to unprepared satellites for repair, refueling, or repositioning in orbit.”
THEY SEEM TO THINK THAT ANONYMOUSLY AND BELATEDLY TELLING SOME OF THE TRUTH GETS THEM OFF THE HOOK:
A lot of this. No names. pic.twitter.com/mPeXVjmf7V
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 22, 2025
MORE OF WHAT I VOTED FOR: Trump Tells a Reporter What He Thinks of Him, and It’s a Beautiful Thing to Watch.
THAT SEEMS WISE: FDA plans to limit COVID shots to those over 65 or with high-risk conditions. “The COVID-19 public health emergency has officially ended, and we are entering a new phase in our response to the virus. A rubber-stamping approach to approving COVID boosters in perpetuity without updated clinical trial data under the Biden administration is now over.”
LINCOLN BROWN: Europe’s Death Spiral Picks Up Speed. “A cruise up the Seine sounds tantalizing. Spending time in a foreign ER with a subdural hematoma or being forcibly relieved of all my valuables does not.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tragedy In DC as Two Israeli Embassy Staffers Assassinated. “It has been reported that the shooter yelled, ‘Free Palestine,’ which isn’t surprising at all. What I was originally leading off with was a story about Secretary of State Marco Rubio going off on Hamas/terrorism sympathizer Rep. Pramila Jayapal from Washington. Jayapal was grilling Rubio about one of the foreign national Gaza/genocide loons who had her student visa revoked.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: They’ve Learned Nothing: Dems Still Pushing the Same Failed, Unpopular Gun Control That Got Them Where They Are Today.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), for instance, has lately introduced the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban of 2025,” while an Illinois Democrat has proposed a bill to ban semiautomatic “convertible pistols.” The American public, meanwhile, still isn’t buying it.
Dr. John Lott, Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, recently described the results of a poll that the CPRC commissioned last December on crime and gun control. The poll asked general election voters in America which of three approaches, in their opinion, was most likely to reduce crime: enacting more gun control, stricter enforcement of existing gun control laws, or having law enforcement arrest violent, repeat offenders and ending cashless bail reforms.
Less than one in five respondents felt the answer was more gun control.
To be fair, Democrats don’t want to learn anything. They just want gun control, and lots of it.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Democrats Compared Parental Rights Groups to the KKK While Passing a Transgender Law. Now, Those Groups Are Suing.
The parental rights groups Defending Education, the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, and Protect Kids Colorado teamed up with the medical watchdog group Do No Harm and a medical doctor, Dr. Travis Morrell, to file the lawsuit Monday, challenging HB 25-1312, which Polis, a Democrat, signed Friday. The law amends the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of “gender expression,” specifically stating that refusing to use a person’s “chosen name” will constitute discrimination.
The lawsuit claims this violates the First Amendment by compelling Coloradans to speak to promote transgender issues, in violation of their free speech. It also claims that requiring staff at places of public accommodation to use a transgender person’s “chosen name” is unconstitutionally vague and subject to arbitrary enforcement, violating the 14th Amendment.
…
The groups are suing Colorado because they “believe that sex is immutable and fixed at birth, and they oppose the spread of controversial gender ideologies among Colorado’s youth,” according to the lawsuit. “They do not want to be forced to affirm—through the use of pronouns, names, or other language—that a biological man is actually a woman or vice versa. Yet that is precisely what HB 25-1312 requires.”
That must be more of Polis’s “light regulatory touch.”
May 21, 2025
MUST-SEE TV:
This is amazing. Great work @ShutupLyle
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) May 21, 2025
LET’S HOPE THE SECOND STAGE AVOIDS ANOTHER EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM:
SpaceX’s Starship is expected to launch its Ninth Test Flight.
Here’s what you need to know:
Launch Window: Tuesday, May 27, Time: TBD
Sonic Booms: Possible in Brownsville, South Padre Island, and Port Isabel
Stay Informed: https://t.co/nnELGs4q0F#SpaceX #StarshipLaunch #BTXRGV pic.twitter.com/In9w9OEG8r— City of Brownsville (@BTxRGV) May 20, 2025
“BABBLING.”
Trump uses his remarkable abilities once again as he convinces the Democrats to wholeheartedly support white genocide.
Every single time. https://t.co/hGpf9vrYat
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 21, 2025
More:
The South African Minister of Agriculture confirmed in the Oval Office today that white farmers are being killed and that it’s a serious problem. Yet, this is what CNN puts out. pic.twitter.com/6M731FOIGs
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 21, 2025
Maybe these folks should try reading the news.
BECAUSE YOU’LL TRAVEL WHEN AND WHERE YOU’RE ALLOWED TO: Why Are Leftists So Obsessed With Train Travel?
WELL, GOOD: World moves away from ‘green gospel of scarcity’ and now embraces ‘energy abundance,’ experts say.
This shift away from the de-growth fervor that was popular for over a decade was the overriding topic at the RealClear Energy Future Forum Monday. Panels of experts in engineering, data centers, mining, oil and gas, and the electricity grid discussed how this change of views has impacted various aspects of the world’s energy picture.
“I think we’ve gone from scarcity to abundance — from the green gospel of scarcity and its Trinitarian ESG god — to the promised land of abundance guided by the values of affordability and reliability,” David DesRosiers, conference co-chair and founder of the RealClear Foundation, said.
Mark Mills, conference co-chair and director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, discussed the role of increasing energy demand as a result of the growth of data centers and artificial intelligence. While many tech companies, such as Microsoft, embraced net-zero goals, Mills explained that the energy demands of data centers forced companies to contend with the reality that although fashionable in some circles, intermittent wind and solar power are not adequate.
“Eventually, reality rears its ugly head, and we recalibrate around what reality permits,” Mills said.
It generally takes concerted government action to create a shortage of things that people want.
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS ENJOYING A SPA DAY: ‘Manifesto’ of IVF Clinic Bomber Shows Him to Be an ‘Anti-Life’ Nihilist.
HMM: GOP hard-liners threatening late revolt over megabill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a last-minute rebellion from conservatives on Republicans’ megabill, with a deal on a key tax deduction with blue-state Republicans and a lack of progress on settling other key provisions frustrating hard-liners.
“I think actually we’re further away from a deal because that SALT cap increase, I think, upset a lot of conservatives,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the House Freedom Caucus chair, said in an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday morning, referring to the state-and-local-tax deduction. “The conservatives are pushing for some balancing spending reductions.”
Johnson signaled Tuesday he wanted to call a vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday evening. A person with direct knowledge of the talks who was granted anonymity to describe them candidly said “there is currently a zero percent chance this thing moves today,” saying leaders “walked away from a deal last night and even rolled back progress made over the weekend.”
In a brief interview Wednesday morning, Johnson said “there is a chance for a vote today” when asked about the comments by Harris and other conservatives. He said he continues to talk with the conservative holdouts.
Johnson and a group of blue-state Republicans reached a critical but tentative deal Tuesday night to boost the cap on the state-and-local-tax deduction to $40,000 in the GOP domestic-policy bill that is at the center of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, energy and the border. Conservatives have strongly opposed further increasing the SALT cap.
Trump — and congressional Republicans — need a win on Capitol Hill more than any single policy item.
OPTIMUS: Musk’s ‘Biggest Product of All Time’ Will Do Your Dishes. “A new humanoid robot demo just dropped — and the most impressive part is how boring it is. Following verbal, natural-language instructions, Tesla’s battery-powered Optimus can take out the trash, sweep up a mess, and even tear a single paper towel off the roll with eerily human precision.”
CDR SALAMANDER: Preparation of the Seabed Battlefield.
“Not subtle,” he writes:
If the PRC wants to pressure Taiwan economically, it needs to be able to threaten its undersea infrastructure as much as that on the surface. To do that, you need to locate it so you can put it in a target set.
If you need to one day defend the approaches to Taiwan, you need detailed knowledge of the seafloor topography in the approaches to Taiwan, as you do for the beaches and roads on Taiwan.
That is what she is doing.
It appears that there are still some China Doves out there, so put this in your growing stack of evidence that—regardless of how much you wish it were not true—the PRC is doing all it can for conflict over Taiwan.
More at the link.
FIRST, THEY’D HAVE TO GIVE UP THEIR CRAZY CAT LADY DEMO: Ya Know, Things Would Be a Lot Better if Dems Would Just Stop Electing Lunatics.
THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES DEFLATING: Honda Bucks Trend And Rolls Back EV Plans In Favor Of Hybrids. “Earlier this week, Honda said in Japan that it will abandon its goal of having 30% of its vehicles go electric by 2030, citing a ‘slowdown in the expansion of the EV market due to several factors, including changes in environmental regulations.’ As I mentioned above, that so-called slowdown is just a perceived slowdown being made by Honda to serve its purposes.”
I’m not sure what writer Peter Lyon means by that. Honda’s purpose is to manufacture vehicles people want to buy, correct?
HOWEVER MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…: NBC News Is Quietly Rewriting Its Own Reporting on the Gaza War to Vilify Israel.
The most recent example came buried in a news report that casually claimed Israel had unilaterally broken a ceasefire with Hamas — a striking departure from what the same outlet had previously reported.
This is part of NBC’s increasingly disturbing trend: a pattern in which its journalists appear to be reshaping the facts in Gaza — not because new evidence has emerged, but because the old facts no longer serve the narrative.
And these aren’t obscure details NBC somehow missed. These are facts the news outlet had already acknowledged. Now, they’re being walked back — replaced with a storyline that casts Israel as the aggressor and Hamas as the victim, resulting in some of the most distorted coverage of the conflict in recent months.
Among the issues NBC has fumbled most egregiously is the temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, struck in January 2025 and that expired in March — after Hamas refused to move forward with the next stage of the deal, which would have required it to release the remaining Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7.
At the time, NBC got it right. On March 1, its headline declared the “Gaza ceasefire [was] in doubt,” citing the expiration of the deal and the lack of ongoing negotiations. The subheading noted that Israel wanted to extend the truce — though, tellingly, NBC left out that Hamas’ refusal stemmed from the hostage issue.
But within weeks, that reporting had been scrubbed from memory.
…it isn’t enough.