THIS IS SOLID ADVICE, DEMS. PLEASE HEED IT:

http://twitter.com/bonchieredstate/status/1901722417984356726

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I don’t know why this link isn’t embedding as usual, but here’s the screenshot:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Israel Opts to Put Hamas on the 72 Virgins Express. “The consensus of the sane people in the world is that the ‘war’s goals’ should definitely involve the complete elimination of Hamas. Israelis are at risk as long as any of them are still roaming around Gaza. Even if there are just a few, they’ll get right to work grooming young Gazans for the next generation of attempts to wipe Israel off the map. Those same innocent Gazans that spoiled American college students are using as excused to become latter-day Brownshirts.”

CHANGE? China vows to ‘vigorously boost consumption’ to revive weak economy.

Financial authorities in Beijing on Sunday released a 30-point “special action plan” with priorities including boosting incomes, halting the fall of property prices, stabilizing the stock market and providing child-care subsidies. They ordered local governments to “expand domestic demand in all directions.”

“There is still a lot of work to be done to boost consumption, expand domestic demand and better meet the people’s needs for a better life,” Li Chunlin, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the government agency in charge of economic planning, said at a news conference Monday.

Analysts said the plan was light on specifics and will do little to fix China’s bigger problems. “The basic takeaway is that these are very incremental and limited steps,” said Logan Wright, a partner at Rhodium Group, a research group focused on China’s economy.

Wright said the bigger risks for the country are persistent deflation, unemployment and low household income. “These are structural problems that are not easily solved with a few subsidies here and there,” he said.

Beijing has been promising to boost consumer spending for at least a decade but little has ever come from those promises. People would much rather save than spend in authoritarian countries.

HOIST BY THEIR OWN PETARD: Here’s the Dirty Little Secret Behind the Democrats’ Collapse.

THE HOUTHIS ARE THE SYMPTOM, IRAN’S MULLAHS ARE THE DISEASE:Trump warns Iran it will face ‘consequences’ of further attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels. “The comments by Trump on his Truth Social website escalate his administration’s new campaign of airstrikes targeting the rebels, which killed at least 53 people this weekend alone. U.S. officials said the strikes were carried out against more than 40 targets and more airstrikes were planned in the coming days. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of military operations.”

2026 PREVIEW: The GOP Can Increase Its Margins in the Senate in ’26 and ’28. It Starts With These Two Seats.

COMING HOME: NASA to Provide Live Coverage of Crew-9 Return, Splashdown. “NASA will provide live coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 return to Earth from the International Space Station, beginning with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 p.m. EDT Monday, March 17.”

PAULA BOLYARD: We Were ‘Badly Misled’ on Covid Lab Leak. But Guess Who’s to Blame? “This wasn’t just a case of reporters being tricked into dismissing the lab leak theory — it was a combination of willful blindness and disinformation.”

With a heavy dose of Cancel for those who refused to parrot the party line.

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: The ‘Heroes’ of the Fourth Estate.

Other than Westerns, Courtroom Dramas and Cop Thrillers, this was one of Hollywood’s favorite go-to genres. They were so popular in the Biz that we used to have a joke that if you were serious about getting nominated for an Oscar, your best bet was to make a movie about the Holocaust or a Journalist. Many of the movies in that latter category, “All The President’s Men”, “The Insider”, “The Killing Fields” and “Absence of Malice” to name just a few, are among the finest films ever made and were indeed nominated for a slew of Oscars.

As the 2000’s turned into the 2020’s and Hollywood jettisoned one classic genre after another in the pursuit of cost savings and corporate billion dollar blockbuster-making, the heroic Journalist story remained one of the few classic adult drama genres that Hollywood seemed unable to quit. There is no doubt in my mind that this was because, in the character of the heroic journalist bravely speaking truth to power, Hollywood saw themselves… unafraid storytellers courageously pushing forbidden narratives out into a hopelessly troglodytic America that didn’t want to hear them.

There’s just one problem with that… here at the beginning of 2025, journalists occupy a space on the popularity spectrum somewhere between pond scum and crotch rot.

Hollywood, too — and do read the whole thing.

THIS IS HOW DEMS GROOM LIFELONG POLITICIANS: Raúl Grijalva’s Leftist Legacy of Weaponized School Boards. “Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) died this past Thursday, succumbing to the cancer that he had been belatedly diagnosed with last year (my Townhall colleague Rebecca Downs covered that here). He was my congressman and a radical leftist. I’m not here to vent, however. That’s because Grijalva also taught me one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in forty-plus years of political activism.”

IT WOULD TAKE HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:

RANDI WEINGARTEN SUFFERS UNION FUNDING MELTDOWN.

I’m so mad!! I’m spitting mad about this!pic.twitter.com/IdpoIYbIGZ

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 17, 2025

Yes, this is exactly what I voted for.

IF YOUR SCHADENBONER LASTS MORE THAN FOUR HOURS, CONSULT A DOCTOR:

Schumer spent years rousing his activist base to protest and riot and now won't face them. https://t.co/4WBDGIMa6K

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 17, 2025

There’s been an awful lot of “Democrat hoisted by his own petard” stories lately, and it’s a good time to be alive.

BE CAREFUL OF GETTING WHAT YOU WISH FOR: Here’s the Dirty Little Secret Behind the Democrats’ Collapse (and it Isn’t Even a Secret).

PUBLIUS:

The most brilliant part of the Tren de Aragua deportation flight is that it forced Democrats to defend and uphold literal narco-terrorists who have murdered Americans and destroyed the neighborhoods of working class voters.

I am 100% sure that the Trump team did a careful mission analysis on the best way to get Dems to embarrass themselves more than usual, right down to the careful timing of having the judge impose his TRO while the plane was in international airspace.

This was a carefully planned operation that was executed to perfection.

Kudos to the entire Trump team.

Indeed.

Of course, it helps that the Democrats have a destructive addiction to the 20% side of a whole host of 80/20 issues.

(Typo fixed — thanks!)

MOLON LABE: France Demands America: ‘Give Us Back the Statue of Liberty!’

DECOUPLING: Apple’s India manufacturing efforts expands to AirPods. “According to sources of The Economic Times, Apple will be commencing manufacture of AirPods from April. The production will be taking place at a Foxconn plant located in Hyderabad, with AirPods produced at the facility intended for exports only.”

REFRESHING: So a Cabinet Official Just Went on a Sunday Show to… TELL THE TRUTH???

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Treasury Secretary Bessent says White House is heading off a ‘guaranteed’ financial crisis.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the Trump administration is focused on preventing a financial crisis that could be the result of massive government spending over the past few years.

“What I could guarantee is we would have had a financial crisis. I’ve studied it, I’ve taught it, and if we had kept up at these spending levels that — everything was unsustainable,” Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are resetting, and we are putting things on a sustainable path.”

President Donald Trump has made getting the government’s fiscal house in order a priority since taking office. He created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to spearhead job cuts and early retirement incentives across multiple federal agencies.

Still, the U.S. debt and deficit problem worsened during Trump’s first month in office, as the budget shortfall for February passed the $1 trillion mark.

Yes, we all saw it coming: Biden leaves Trump with deteriorating deficit. “Part of it is a last-minute spending spree by Mr. Biden, who is trying to push money for his big projects out the door before Mr. Trump can jerk the reins.”

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Woman Wearing MAGA Hat Denied Service, Threatened with Baseball Bat at Indianapolis Jazz Club.

TEXAS, MAN: Dade Phelan Wants To Ban Memes.

The bill reeks of the sort of censorious rules against insulting a member of the ruling party you see in communist countries like China or Venezuela. Hell, even the traditionally prickly French repealed their law against insulting the dignity of the French president. The “published, distributed, or broadcast” clause alone is too broad to be constitutional. Even forwarding or reposting a meme is theoretically a crime.

It’s so poorly written and unenforceable bill that Babylon Bee piece “Media Scrambles To Fact-Check Image Of Trump Riding Hero Dog Into Massive Space Battle” could quickly result in actual government prosecutions, at least if Dade Phelan’s fragile ego has anything to say about it.

Meme-makers, have at it.

YOU MEAN, ASIDE FROM PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY? You’ll Never Guess Who Else Thinks Newsom’s Podcast Is Totally Cringe.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Biden appointee makes $360K soft landing at University of Colorado.

Andrew Mayock became the vice chancellor for sustainability as of March 10, for a whopping $360,000 per year. According to a CU media release, the position is “newly created.”

Mayock, is the former chief sustainability officer under President Joe Biden. He led Biden’s agenda on sustainability efforts.

Biden was not his first role under U.S. presidents, having also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations.

Under Obama he served as Deputy Director for Management and Associate Director for General Government Programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Under Clinton he worked at the White House and the U.S. Treasury Department. He also served on the steering committee of the Climate 21 Project.

It is the second time in two years that a newly created position at CU has been filled by an outgoing Democrat loyalist. The two positions combined amount for more than $750,000 a year in salary and benefits.

A year at CU costs about $33,000 for residents and nearly $63,000 for non-residents.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: President Trump Spent the Weekend Golfing and Hunting Pirates. “It’s refreshing to see the President of the United States using the word ‘decisive,’ isn’t it? It’s also a bonus that the guy in charge is keenly aware of who the bad guys are. As we have discussed many times, that’s something that Old Joe and his fellow Democrats get backwards a lot. Seeing gray areas in very black and white situations doesn’t lend itself to decisiveness.”

JOHN GALT COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Electricity gradually returns to Cuba after substation failure left millions in the dark. “Cuba suffered similar blackouts in October, November and December. The latest was the first of 2025 but in mid-February authorities suspended classes and work activities for two days due to a shortage of electricity generation that exceeded 50% in the country.”

TO BE FAIR, SOMETIMES THEY EMBRACE IT: The Media’s Shameful Support for Mahmoud Khalil Ignores His Pro-Hamas Advocacy.