Author Archive: Stephen Green

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

It’s true that “there’s a lot of ruin in a nation” but the Biden administration was particularly reckless and corrupt, trying to find that bottom.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: U.S. military spaceplane completes 7th mission, including advanced orbital maneuvers.

Designated Orbital Test Vehicle-7 (OTV-7), the autonomous spacecraft launched on December 28, 2023, marking several firsts for the program – including its first flight aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and operations in a highly elliptical Earth orbit (HEO).

“Mission 7 broke new ground by showcasing the X-37B’s ability to flexibly accomplish its test and experimentation objectives across orbital regimes,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in a statement following the landing.

The Space Force considers the mission particularly significant for its demonstration of aerobraking maneuvers — a technique that uses atmospheric drag during multiple orbital passes to change the spacecraft’s trajectory while conserving fuel. This capability provides tactical advantages that align with the Space Force’s growing focus on space domain awareness and orbital agility.

The aerobraking capability essentially gives the X-37B a stealth mode for orbital changes without visible propulsion signatures that might be detected by adversaries.

China has one, too: China’s mysterious Shenlong space plane.

FLORIDA, MAN:

Details:

The No. 1 spot went to Utah, which ranked high on nearly all facets — crime, economy, education, infrastructure — but lagged in terms of its natural environment.

New Hampshire took the No. 2 spot, and Nebraska came in at No. 3 overall.

However, Florida still managed to worm its way into the top bracket, placing No. 9. According to the study, the Sunshine State ranked highest among all 50 states for higher education and the economy.

I’m not at all sure how USN&WR determines its final scores, however. Washington state ranked just above Florida at #8 despite being worse in all four metrics — three of them, significantly worse.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Are Hoping to F-Bomb Their Way Into America’s Hearts. “To the surprise of no one, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas shows up in this story. She is rapidly establishing herself as the Queen of the Democratic toilet. If the Dems ever do eventually come up with any coherent plans for emerging from the political exile that they are in at the moment, there’s a good chance that Crockett’s perpetually open foul mouth will interfere with them. I’ve got a feeling about this one.”

PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING: What Went Wrong at Saudi Arabia’s Futuristic Metropolis in the Desert.

It was supposed to be a launch party for the new Saudi Arabia.

Will Smith, Tom Brady and other celebrities gathered on a sandy island in the Red Sea packed with luxury hotels. Superyachts floated nearby while Alicia Keys played for business executives who had flown in from London and New York. Spotlights blared into the night sky.

The October event was the lavish opening of the first part of Neom, a planned metropolis defined by cutting-edge technology and psychedelic architecture, a cornerstone of the country’s plan to pivot its economy away from oil.

The truth for the project was less glamorous.

The relatively simple, low-rise development, known as Sindalah, was over three years late and on track to cost nearly $4 billion, three times its initial budget. Hotels were unfinished, high winds disrupted ferries and golf, and much of the site was still under construction.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Neom’s mastermind, was a surprise no-show. Neom board documents say the party cost at least $45 million. Many Neom staff viewed his absence as a sign of disapproval.

Weeks later, Neom’s boss of six years, a former crown prince favorite, left the project and a new crew of executives was installed to turn Neom around.

After spending more than $50 billion, the crown prince’s sci-fi-inspired dreams — an arid-mountain ski resort, a floating business district, and the Line, the 106-mile-long pair of Empire State Building-height skyscrapers that is Neom’s centerpiece — have collided with reality.

Ozymandias, call your office.

The accounting gimmickry was knee-deep, too:

Bids on early work from contractors ran high. One way executives hid rising costs was to beef up profit assumptions, according to the internal audit and some of the former employees.

The crown prince encouraged Neom to use a commonly used investment metric known as the internal rate of return, essentially the percentage of an investment that comes back in annual profit. If a hotel costs $1 million to build, and is worth $1.1 million a year later, it would have an IRR of 10%.

At Trojena, the planned ski resort, a fall 2023 review found that costs had surged by over $10 billion, according to an internal presentation reviewed by the Journal. That caused the IRR to fall to 7%, below the project’s target of around 9%.

To cover the gap, estimates for the rate at an “inventive glamping” site were readjusted to $704 a night, up from $216, according to the presentation. A “boutique hiking hotel” room was pegged at $1,866 a night, up from $489. The changes helped to push the IRR up to 9.3%.

The audit said Antoni Vives, who oversaw the broad vision at Neom and then ran Sindalah, justified rising costs with higher assumptions on revenue, rather than reassessing them as too expensive. He told colleagues and McKinsey consultants in an email before a key meeting that “we must not proactively mention cost at all.”

Dissent was also quashed. A Sindalah project manager was “removed after they challenged cost estimates,” the internal audit report found.

An attorney for Vives said that work at Neom “was done with total honesty and with the ambition that the project demands, in addition to absolute loyalty to the leadership of the country.”

“Absolute loyalty” to multibillion-dollar boondoggles that nobody but the well-connected ever asked for gets you… well, something like Neom or four years of the Biden administration.

MARK PENN: Democrats Look Silly And Their Numbers Are Really Tanking, They Are at Lowest Point I Have Ever Seen.

I used to be on the other side, you know, helping to craft the State of the Union from the Democratic side of President Clinton. And we knew when we were going to make the Republicans, you know, clap with us and they would. And I just think the idea of the Democrats thinking they could sit there through this and not not kind of be part of the process.

And people not showing up at all. Look, Trump is a duly elected president in a, you know, in a joint session speech. Everybody should be there.

Everybody should be polite. They’ll get their opportunities to, you know, do their thing. And look, you know, it’s a reality that the person giving the speech has a double barreled shotgun and the person giving the response has a pop gun.

And but Trump, that was probably his best, you know, I think his best speech ever, really. And I think the emotional power of the examples and the stories that he told. And I’m looking at some of the poll numbers, you know, coming back on it was was very strong.

And the Democrats look silly and Democratic numbers are really tanking. They are at the lowest point that I have ever seen the Democratic Party since maybe, you know, the days that it lost 49 states.

When Democrats can’t even stand and applaud for the cancer kid getting a virtual Make-a-Wish moment on live TV, there’s something much deeper wrong with that party’s elected officials than just bad policy — but, God knows, there’s plenty of bad policy.

SPOILER: IT WAS NEVER THAT VALUABLE. Why Has the ‘Valuable Resource’ Known as 538 Been Summarily Discarded? “Well, there’s a lot to work through here and I suppose the best place to begin is with ABC News claiming to offer ‘best-in-class polling,’ to which my reply can be summarized briefly: LOL, are you kidding me?“

WINNING:

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: World’s Dumbest Criminal NOT From Florida? YOU Make the Call! “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have a jewelry heist that’s hard to swallow, what not to play with in the backseat of your Lyft, and Georgia Woman’s Whataburger caper might have taken away Florida Man’s Crown of Shame forever.”

YOU CAN BARELY TELL THE PLAYERS APART EVEN WITH A SCORECARD: Another Day, Another Democratic Activist Scam Artist. “As Democratic activists never tire of reminding us while they lose election after election, not only are they smarter and better education that those inbred Trump-voting freaks of JesusLand, they’re simply better people than those greedy, money-grubbing peasants they look down on. Yet somehow, despite those giant piles of moral superiority, time and time again it turns out that they’re the ones committing fraud.”

SAY ANYTHING: Jasmine Crockett Says Trump Is Going After Illegals So He Can Send Black People ‘Back to the Fields.’

Crockett’s comments surfaced during a segment for a “24-Hour State of the People Marathon,” which was a protest event designed to counter the president’s address to Congress earlier this week.

The livestream featured a never-ending assembly line of guests providing racially charged and provocative commentary. Crockett did not disappoint.

“As they have decided to go after immigrants and these — and things like that, and they’ve said, ‘Oh, they’ve taken your black job, they’ve taken your black jobs,'” she told viewers. “Not really, they are obviously jobs that they want us to go back to, such as work in the fields, alright?”

“Those immigrants that come into our country, they work the fields, something that we ain’t done in a long time,” added Crockett. “And clearly, he is trying to make us go back to the fields.”

Crockett was last seen working TikTok, not Congress.

PRIORITIES:

More:

2022 LAFD Honorary Fire Chief, Paul Scrivano “We are nothing more now than the homeless Transport service”

“The biggest reason why the fire department will continue to fail is because we are nothing more now than the homeless Transport service in in the city of Los Angeles. We don’t need more stations. We don’t need more ambulances. We don’t need more paramedics. We need to stop transporting 1200 -1500 bums to the hospital every day. 2000 calls a day, 75%, 1500 calls a day are homeless related for homeless.”

Exit quote: “If the problem goes away, the money goes away.”

SAVINGS YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Elon Musk’s DOGE Cancels Lease at Obama Library Site.

Since taking office on January 20, President Donald Trump has pledged to reduce federal costs dramatically and shrink the government workforce. The lease termination is part of a broader wave of DOGE contract cancellations and federal cost-cutting efforts.

The lease cancelation is expected to have minimal impact on the library. Federal officials said in 2024 that the library would close later this year and move to a new location.

DOGE said on its website that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which controls official presidential libraries and records, has terminated its $1.48 million annual lease with the Obama Presidential Library. DOGE claims this will result in total savings of $740,457.

The rent’s too damn high.

BURNIN’ FOR YOU: Now Karen Bass’s Pants Are on Fire, Too. “Oh, Karen. Did you really think you’d get away with pretending you knew nothing about the off-the-charts, crazy windstorm predictions before you left the country and the fires broke out?”

THAT’S OK: SpaceX Starship Test Flight 8 Went Half-Kablooey. “The race to radically reduce launch costs and pave the way to Mars and back to the moon — with the world’s most powerful and first fully reusable rocket — took one more small step forward yesterday with Starship’s eighth flight test.”

Some people just don’t get it, however:

I’m not convinced Ali is actually the dumbest motherf***** on X but only because the competition is so fierce and the field is so wide.