SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE JUST HAD ITS DOOR KNOCKED DOWN: Majority of Swatting Attacks Target Conservatives.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 7, 2025
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Celebrities: Trump Will Destroy the World!
The 2024 election saw a galaxy of stars support Vice President Kamala Harris. For every Trump-backing Zachary Levi or Hulk Hogan there were dozens of A-listers backing a leader who feared talking to Joe Rogan.
The word salad spinner lost, badly, to President Donald Trump all the same. Even left-leaning news outlets suggested how little celebrity endorsements matter in the Age of Trump.
Now, some of the most notable names in entertainment warn President Trump will destroy the country, if not the planet.
Is anyone listening? Or caring?
Good question, but for most people, the answer seems to be No.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: ‘F’ Is for Democrat: Colorado’s Collapse Under One-Party Rule. “Colorado’s economic report card is in and my beloved home state — formerly a solid A and B student — just flunked every subject.”
ONE SOLUTION MIGHT BE THE RETURN OF IN-CLASS ESSAYS:
For higher education, “AI’s takeover [is] a full-blown existential crisis.”
“College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point.”
“I think we are years — or months, probably — away from a world where nobody thinks using AI for homework is considered cheating.”
“It isn’t… pic.twitter.com/Jlkdng6VRK
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) May 7, 2025
The full story is behind a paywall but these excerpts tell most of it:
For higher education, “AI’s takeover [is] a full-blown existential crisis.”
“College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point.”
“I think we are years — or months, probably — away from a world where nobody thinks using AI for homework is considered cheating.”
“It isn’t as if cheating is new. But now, as one student put it, ‘the ceiling has been blown off.’ Who could resist a tool that makes every assignment easier with seemingly no consequences?”
“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate.”
“The humanities, and writing in particular, are quickly becoming an anachronistic art elective like basket-weaving.”
“Many teachers now seem to be in a state of despair.”
“Every time I talk to a colleague about this, the same thing comes up: retirement. When can I retire? When can I get out of this? That’s what we’re all thinking now.”
Sad.
SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS: ‘Difficult Times’ for the Mainstream Media? Cry Me a River.
OUCH: Another Navy jet falls into sea, marking fourth major mishap in months. “The F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet, worth about $67 million, went overboard after an unsuccessful attempt to slow it down upon landing on the USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said in a statement. Both aviators aboard the jet safely ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter with minor injuries, and no one aboard the warship’s flight deck was harmed, the service said.”
The report doesn’t say what caused the “unsuccessful attempt to slow it down.” Did the tailhook fail to catch the arresting wire? Did the arresting wire suffer some kind of failure? Something else?
HOPEFULLY SANITY WILL BREAK OUT BEFORE FULL-SCALE WAR DOES: The Precipice of Armageddon? Nuclear Powers India and Pakistan Inch Closer to All-Out War.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Duh! Study shows ‘defund the police’ resulted in more killings.
Our new study of 15 major cities including New York City, Chicago, Austin, Portland and Minneapolis found that murders spiked in the wake of the summer 2020 unrest as police pulled back – making fewer stops and arrests.
When policing rebounded in these cities, murders declined dramatically.
Across the 15 cities with a combined population of 27 million and a disproportion share of violent crime, police stops and arrests dropped 40% after May 2020, but have since risen –up 37% from their recent lows in 2021 and 2022.
“Defund the police” is better understood as “More crime against minorities.”
SADLY, THIS LOOKS LIKE THE FIRST OF A LONG SERIES: Dispatches From Self-Occupied Britain. “Britain’s big secret is out and, frankly, it was never really a secret.”
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: How Bad Is China’s Economy? The Data Needed to Answer Is Vanishing.
Not long ago, anyone could comb through a wide range of official data from China. Then it started to disappear.
Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone.
In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
In most cases, Chinese authorities haven’t given any reason for ending or withholding data. But the missing numbers have come as the world’s second biggest economy has stumbled under the weight of excessive debt, a crumbling real-estate market and other troubles—spurring heavy-handed efforts by authorities to control the narrative.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing some numbers related to unemployment in urban areas in recent years. After an anonymous user on the bureau’s website asked why one of those data points had disappeared, the bureau said only that the ministry that provided it stopped sharing the data.
The disappearing data have made it harder for people to know what’s going on in China at a pivotal time.
China’s economic stats were almost certainly no good even when they did publish them. So my takeaways are that the fake figures needed to cover for the country’s actual performance became too ridiculous to be believed, and that Xi needs trade negotiations to succeed.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: DoJ Opens Investigation Into Minnesota DA Who Refused to Charge Tesla Vandal With Felonies.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that the U.S. is in the midst of negotiations with 17 of the country’s largest trading partners, and previewed a timeline for concluding those pending trade deals.
Bessent said in his testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government that the timing of trade deals “will be path dependent on our trade partners.”
“There are 18 very important trading relationships. We are currently negotiating with 17 of those trading partners. China – we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet,” he said.
Previously: Despite their denials, China is losing the tariffs war and retreating as fast as it can.
We’ll see — this has a long way to play out.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Somehow, Michelle Obama Has Become Even More Tedious. “What is most stunning here is that Mrs. Obama has proven herself even more narcissistic than her husband. She’s much less interesting than he is though. It’s Hillary Clinton all over again, where we are being subjected to the coattails ride of a bitter spouse. If all of this publicity is, as many people think, paving the way for a presidential run, Mrs. Obama seems to be gunning for the disgruntled housewife demographic.”
YES: Want More Kids? Make Cheaper Minivans.
Moms in minivans are a running joke. My husband and I bought a used one back when we were hoping for our third kid. (We now have four… kids, that is, not minivans). Around the same time, a viral music video called “Never Thought I’d Do It” was making the rounds and illustrating the appeal for parents of the admittedly unappealing-looking car type. “I sold out to all the leg room,” sings one of the moms early in the song.
Our previous car — a Toyota Corolla — could not easily fit three car seats, and it wasn’t up to us how many we needed to carry. These days, car seat regulations are onerous. Where I live, the absolute earliest you can ditch a booster is age eight. (My second son is turning eight this summer, but he’s a skinny kid. Based on the weight requirements he’s not getting out of a booster any time soon). As academic research has shown, there is a very plausible argument that car seats have depressed national fertility rates. Parents unable to fit more car seats into their too-small vehicles have opted not to have that third baby. By the same logic, minivan prices must also play a part in the current “birth dearth.” At our local car dealership the going rate for a new minivan is well over $40,000! By contrast, a new commuter car is $25,000.
The consequences of car costs on families who want more kids should be obvious.
Indeed.
Previously: Car Seats as Contraception. “Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”
EUROPE IS LARGELY ASHAMED OF ITS VICTORIES NOW: Subdued Celebrations Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX gets US approval to launch more Starship flights from Texas.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Tuesday received approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to increase the number of annual Starship rocket launches from five to 25 at its Texas base, marking a major boost for the company’s ambitions.
Following a multi-year environmental review, the FAA concluded that the expanded cadence of launches and landings would not significantly affect the environment, overruling objections from conservation groups who warned the move could endanger species such as sea turtles and shorebirds.
Musk’s massive campaign donations and close ties to US President Donald Trump have raised concerns over possible conflicts of interest, particularly given the influence of the Department of Government Efficiency — an entity Musk led — which exerts significant sway over federal agencies.
“The purpose of SpaceX’s proposed action is to provide greater mission capability to NASA and the Department of Defense,” the FAA said in its finding.
“SpaceX’s activities would continue to fulfill the US expectation that increased capabilities and reduced space transportation costs will enhance exploration (including within the Artemis and Human Landing System programs), support US national security, and make space access more affordable.”
That’s a cadence of just over two launches per month, and the last Starship flight test was two months ago — so let’s get to it!
DAVID SOLWAY: Canada’s War on… Canada.
Canada is walking down a dangerous path. In a recent episode of “The Winston Marshall Show,” Steve Bannon has warned that “Canada could become ‘the next Ukraine’ if Russia or China presses territorial claims in the Arctic. “There’s no money there to defend anybody,” Bannon said, arguing that the United Kingdom, Canada’s historic security partner, “can’t defend itself.” Bannon suggested that Ottawa has only “two, maybe three years to act before external pressures harden.”
[Bannon’s] warning about Canada becoming a second Ukraine seems a gross exaggeration. Yet we recall that both Trudeau père and Trudeau fils were enamored of Communist China, that China has interfered in Canada’s elections favoring the Liberals, that Mark Carney is beholden to China to the tune of hundreds of millions in loans and “over $3 billion in politically sensitive investments with Chinese state-linked real estate and energy companies,” and that Canada hosted the Chinese military for tactical training in cold-weather warfare.
Carney, a man of no charisma and less common sense for all his parenthetical savoir faire and encapsulated expertise, has already said that Canada’s friendly relationship and customary economic partnership with the U.S. is at an end. Meanwhile, an impoverished Canada will need generous amounts of foreign aid and may conceivably get it from China, in exchange for military bases and Canada-China cooperation in the Arctic.
Read the whole thing — and with Greenland in mind.
May 6, 2025
DECOUPLING: Mattel CEO says toy manufacturing won’t come to America, but price hikes will.
“We don’t see that happening,” Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, less than a day after the company withdrew annual financial targets.
“We need to remember that a significant part of toy creation happens in America,” he said. “Design, development, product engineering, brand management all happens in America. Making product, producing product in other countries, allows us to create quality products at affordable price points.”
Mattel has been diversifying its global manufacturing for nearly a decade in an effort to reduce its dependence on China. By the end of the year, less than 40% of Mattel’s product will be sourced from the country. Kreiz noted that in two years, no country will represent more than 25% of Mattel’s sourcing.
Reducing dependency on China is good, at least.
CHANGE: FDA’s top inspector abruptly retires. “Rogers has had a challenging tenure atop the agency’s inspections workforce. He was the top official overseeing food inspections during the infant formula crisis in 2022, when the agency mishandled whistleblower complaints about a troubled formula plant linked to a deadly recall. He also oversaw a resulting reorganization of the FDA’s inspections office in 2024.”
NICE: Majority of American Muslims DON’T Oppose Trump’s Gaza Plan; Take Anger Out on DEMOCRATS!
I’m a big fan of Trump’s two-track peace plan.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Columbus Didn’t Sail for Spices — He Was on a Secret Mission Against Islam!
I’ve been getting a lot out of Raymond’s video podcasts.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Merit pay is coming to Houston under Mike Miles’ go-big-or-go-home plan.