EVERYBODY WHO DIDN’T GET NUKED, FOR STARTERS: Who Won The India-Pakistan War?

I’m inclined to think that India won, because they successfully hit their targets and dirtnapped a lot of jihadis, and Pakistan doesn’t seem to have successfully struck anything of import. But I don’t know for sure, since the never-entirely-trustworthy American media has a done a poor job reporting the conflict (evidently it’s really hard to blame Donald Trump for a sectarian conflict over a century old), and the local media on both sides seem entirely too biased to trust. And as for this Reuters report that Trump says disputes are “settled,” that’s either the usual MSM incompetence or “figuratively, not literally” at work. The Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir will probably continue as long as those two nations still exist.

So I’m at a loss to say definitively who won this most recent flareup.

Trump came away looking pretty good.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The 175,000 Pages of Federal Regulations Make a Mockery of the Term ‘Rule of Law.’

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered.

This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!! pic.twitter.com/4LUK6crHAT

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 15, 2025

CHANGE:

🚨 JUST IN: Judge Jeanine Pirro has been sworn in as interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/ek8BOMmoa5

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) May 15, 2025

HE SEEMS TO BE CRACKING UNDER THE STRESS OF RUNNING FOR POTUS: In Unhinged Rant, Gavin Newsom Essentially Admits He’s at Fault for Homeless Crisis in CA.

#METOO:

They're all so deeply full of shit and I'm glad they had their asses handed to them https://t.co/S8RasQmSZY

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) May 15, 2025

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: What’s a Journalism?

“I’m a journalism!” hapless Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum says in one of my favorite memes — a favorite because sometimes it takes a meek moron’s malapropism to express what we were all thinking.

Poor Ralph. He never quite understands what’s going on around him, but he always wants to help. Then there are Washington’s actual journalists — I’ve called them many other names over the years, none of them nice — who surely understand much but seem only to push partisan narratives.

That’s how Ralph’s “I’m helping!” while standing uselessly around became “I’m a journalism!” Some versions of the meme show Ralph with a finger jammed up his nose, as if for emphasis.

The everyday reporter brings biases — and increasingly, a near-total ignorance of anything that might add essential context. My concern today isn’t with them because they’re just following the lead of media-types much higher up the food chain.

So today, let’s take a look at three examples: the publisher, the talking head, and the fact-checker.

Much more at the link.

SKYNET FROWNS: Executives Are Pouring Money Into AI. So Why Are They Saying It’s Not Paying Off?

The general fear of being left behind by missing the boat on AI is still rampant.

“At this point, leaders who aren’t leveraging AI and their own data to move forward are making a conscious business decision not to compete,” IBM vice chairman Gary Cohn wrote in the report. “As AI adoption accelerates, creating greater efficiency, and productivity gains, the ultimate pay-off will only come to CEOs with the courage to embrace risk as opportunity.”

But how to leverage AI meaningfully — and convey that vision to workers — is proving extremely difficult.

According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of US employees felt that “their organization has communicated a clear AI strategy.” Only 11 percent said they feel “very prepared” to work with AI, a drop of six percent from Gallup’s 2023 survey.

Despite pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI investments and supporting infrastructure expansions, companies are still many years out from turning a profit. When, or if, they’ll ever get to the point where AI pays for itself remains to be seen.

“Are we using GenAI to solve real problems, or just optimizing slide decks?” Curioser.AI CEO Stephen Klein told Forbes.

In a study commissioned by Microsoft last year, researchers claimed that for every $1 invested in generative AI, companies would realize an average of $3.70 in return, claims that were never externally validated.

Even ChatGPT loses money, despite having all that money thrown their way.

WIKIPEDIA IS FREE AND WORTH LESS THAN YOU PAY FOR IT:

Somebody is trying to erase the Druze Massacres page from Wikipedia. pic.twitter.com/JpCBDrofr7

— Jacob Ben-David Linker 🪬🕎✡️🕎🪬 (@JacobALinker) May 15, 2025

LOVELY: Not All Heroes Wear Capes. This One Wears a Baseball Uniform.

OUR GRID WASN’T IN GREAT SHAPE EVEN BEFORE LEFTIES STARTED MUCKING WITH IT:

America is at high risk of blackouts because we decided to retire a bunch of power plants and replace them with solar and wind, right as demand for electricity started to rise.

We are still on the same track as Western Europe, just a bit behind. pic.twitter.com/PediUBTWPk

— Russ Greene (@GreenPlusAnE) May 15, 2025

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Kimmel, Clooney Have Some Serious Explaining to Do.

The 46th president lacks the mental acuity to serve a second term, Clooney wrote in The New York Times. He had seen Biden up close during a June 2024 fundraising event, and it wasn’t pretty.

The media has been protecting Clooney ever since. Journalists refused to ask the Oscar winner why he waited so long before publicly sharing the president’s mental decline.

And it’s not for lack of media access.

My theory is that Clooney turned against Biden, not because he was senile, but because he was so senile that he didn’t recognize George Clooney.

YOU GOTTA PUMP THOSE NUMBERS UP, THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS IN THIS RACKET: 100 Days, 142,000 Deportations.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG:

USATODAY's crossword puzzle wants you to fill in Lia Thomas as the answer to a "NCAA champion swimmer."

Lia Thomas is a man. He cheated to get his NCAA championship.

USATODAY is promoting a cheater and a liar.

Lia Thomas did not earn his medal. pic.twitter.com/lA7Jyo4OIr

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 15, 2025

SKYNET IS A LEFTY: Worldcon Uses AI To Hunt Wrongthink. “The World Science Fiction Convention, the same people who thought it was a dandy idea to have a Worldcon in communist China, have stepped in it again. This time, the scandal is using ChatGPT to hunt wrongthink.”

GET ‘EM SKEERED AND KEEP THE SKEER ON ‘EM: DOGE Still Hard at Work Cutting Fraud and Waste.

OH:

Secretive 89-year old Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into a galaxy of liberal dark money groups in the last 2 decades, is being sued for sexual harassment by a 30-year old former employee.https://t.co/QVZKWgYzrW https://t.co/EbpH0D7odk pic.twitter.com/nKUKrVGu5p

— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) May 15, 2025

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Trump Team Ain’t Playin’ Around: More Hanky Panky Busted at the CFTC.

Remember back to last week when I told y’all about the work-from-home fraud that Caroline Pham, acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), had released a statement on?

The post was fun in itself because I got to use the Trading Places clip where Aykroyd and Murphy ruin the Dukes to explain what some of it is that the CFTC helps regulate.

When I first started writing that, there hadn’t been much information available about why ‘staff members’ had been put on leave, which naturally led to speculation about trading irregularities and that sort of thing. Later information revealed the worker phoning it in from a foreign country and the union leaders who’d facilitated it.

Which was pretty bad and apparently cost the government a fortune in wrongfully claimed salary, etc., not to mention the fraud itself.

Good on her, I said.

Little did I know Ms Pham is a tiger and, thanks to brother Bingley alerting me to another email he got this morning, she’s on the horn about another far more egregious case of actual wrongful government prosecution, CFTC false statements, and just malicious incompetence.

Much more at the link.

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…: Same Day a Democrat ‘Outs’ Herself as a Swinger, the Media Plays the ‘Dumb Blonde’ Card on Pam Bondi.

PRIORITIES:

Interesting morning so far. I'm looking at a spreadsheet that summarizes all of the infrastructure construction and repair projects for 13 Navy bases in the mid-Atlantic region. I posted Monday about how the Navy needs many billions of dollars just to move our shore…

— Rich "Corky" Erie (@RSE_VB) May 14, 2025

Full text:

Interesting morning so far. I’m looking at a spreadsheet that summarizes all of the infrastructure construction and repair projects for 13 Navy bases in the mid-Atlantic region. I posted Monday about how the Navy needs many billions of dollars just to move our shore infrastructure just from “awful” to “below average”. Here’s some numbers for you.

Total number of projects – 184 (pier replacements, weapons magazines, shore power for subs, drydocks, etc.)

Total cost – $ 13,026,832,000 (Yes, $13 Billion)

Number of projects briefed up the chain of command in hopes of getting funded – 34 (and not all those will be funded)

Number of projects listed as “MUST FUND” – 5

All that’s interesting and sad, but THIS will get your blood boiling (and send @johnkonrad and @cdrsalamander to mars):

Of the 5 projects out of 184 listed as “MUST FUND”, 4 of them are CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTERS. In the face of potential war with China, your Navy is telling you what their priorities are.

A Navy that invested in child development centers is not a Navy invested in sinking the other guy’s ships and smashing his ports and airfields.

I know which kind of Navy I’d prefer, but the top brass doesn’t seem to agree.

THAT WOULD BE NICE, BUT THIS CONGRESS DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE ANY PRIORITIES: Here’s An Idea…Congress Should Prioritize Taking the Anti-Gun Politics Out of the Banking Business.

WHEW: ISIS Attack Thwarted at Army Facility Near Detroit, Michigan.

EVERYONE KNEW…

In every meeting, huh? That’s a lot of meetings & a lot of people. Everyone knew. https://t.co/IkwOqkImAM

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 14, 2025

…but nobody would admit who was running the country.

JOANNE JACOBS: Honors for none.

In high school, I had to pay attention because I was in “Level 1” classes that were challenging. My classmates were all smart and motivated. Even in math and science, not my strong suits, it was fun.

Ditching honors classes in the name of “equity” is a bad idea, writes Rikki Schlott in the New York Post. In the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto Unified will dump honors biology classes and place all freshmen in the same “foundational” course, she notes. “Honors English has already been sidelined.”

The board voted for “de-laning” in January, but it’s become an issue this week, because Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman in the area, tweeted against the idea: “It is absurd that [the] Palo Alto School district just voted to remove honors biology for all students and already removed honors English,” Khanna wrote. “They call it de-laning. I call it an assault on excellence.”

Lefties usually hate excellence, so good on Khanna for calling out this insanity.

MAY BE? Three New Jersey Dems May Be Stripped of Committee Assignments After ‘Storming’ ICE Facility.