YOU CAN’T SPELL “CAVEAT EMPTOR” WITHOUT AN E AND A V: How About a Cheap Used Car? It’s Only Two Years Old, But There’s a Catch…

IT HAS TO DIE SOMEWHERE SO IT MIGHT AS WELL BE NOW AND IN GAZA: Nation Building’s Last Stand in Gaza.

Israel has been stuck living next door to a failed thirty year nation-building experiment gone bad. And everyone in the international community is worried that the Oct 7 war will see it taken apart.

Lately the nation building experts have taken to warning that Israel is doing it the wrong way. Former CIA Director David Petraeus who also oversaw American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been arguing that Israel needs to pivot to a “counterinsurgency” model. And then we’re back to “winning hearts and minds” instead of actually trying to win a war.

The Biden administration has never stopped insisting that Israel needs a “day after” plan for rebuilding Gaza under a PLO government and some “moderate” terrorists from Hamas. Three generations after it became the norm, fighting a war without nation building as an endgame is so impossible that warfare experts can’t even understand what they’re seeing in Israel.

But among all the other problems with nation building is that it doesn’t work. And the Israelis who have been living next to the original chernobyl of nation building know it better than anyone.

Nation building has failed in every single Muslim country it’s been tried, not just by the United States after 9/11, but by the British between WWI and WWII. The entire Middle East is one long great nation building disaster shaped by primeval nation building experiments such as the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Hashemite monarchies and finally the recession of colonialism.

Plus: “After two decades of failing to win a war (because we didn’t even try) maybe it’s time to let the Israelis give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? Gaza will be overrun by Islamic terrorists? Muslims will hate us and try to kill us? There will be op-eds in the New York Times?”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The ‘Biden-Hamas 2024’ Campaign Isn’t Doing So Well. “Obviously, I didn’t pay any attention to the news while I was gone. I began to catch up a little as I headed to LaGuardia on Wednesday. As I was having a beer at the airport, the television nearest me had the news on. When they got around to the Trump-Biden debate news, a young Hispanic man who worked at the bar turned to me and said, ‘I’m getting popcorn for this.’ Then he leaned over to me and said, ‘I think Trump is going to win in a landslide.'”

ANOTHER BREWING CRISIS BY DESIGN: More Chinese Nationals Illegally Entered The U.S. In Two Days This Month Than In All Of 2021. “The CCP leadership’s chemical and political warfare against the U.S. coincides with a surge in the number of Chinese illegal aliens crossing the southern border without authorization. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 10,000 Chinese unlawful aliens have been apprehended since October 2022, compared to fewer than 500 in the same period in 2021. This increase may be attributed to various factors, such as the economic and social uncertainties and the limited personal freedoms in China, the demand for cheap labor, and the effectiveness of smugglers already positioned in the U.S.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Kurt Schlichter scenario is looking more plausible, too.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can Biden’s Military Tear Itself Away From Drag Shows Long Enough to Deal With Terrorist Threats?

MATTHEW SCHMITZ: The New Midlife Crisis.

Works of popular art have begun to document the new crisis. Barbie, the 2023 blockbuster directed by Greta Gerwig, is a modern Pinocchio story. Initially, Barbie is a deathless, sexless being—unconcerned with men or children, immune to thoughts of mortality. No mere doll, she is the model career woman. “She has her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career. Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything.” She is living Betty Friedan’s dream. But when Barbie becomes human, she must come to terms with biological realities. The film ends with her visit to an ob-gyn. In real life, the visits are to IVF clinics.

Men have much more time on their clocks, a fact that allows millennial males now entering middle age to defer any deliberation about what they want out of life. Instead of a second adolescence, they seem determined to enjoy perpetual adolescence. (Is it any wonder that female millennial professionals are desperate when they wake up at age thirty-five and realize they want a husband?) But how long can men defer the reckoning? The Worst Person in the World, a 2021 film by the Norwegian director Joachim Trier, offers an answer. It features a man who suddenly learns he has cancer. He is the paragon of creative-class success, an underground comic-book artist whose most famous creation has been turned into a movie. But he never managed to have the children he wanted. He lost the woman he loved. All he has left are his collections of comic books and records.

Baby Boomers got married, owned homes, and had kids. The price was conformity. No doubt it could be stultifying. But for most people, the crisis was mild. You could waste money on a sports car and still have grandchildren someday. That was true even if your affairs led to a messy divorce. What of my generation?

They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

VICTORIA TAFT WITH ANOTHER TRIAL UPDATE: Trump’s Long-Time Nemesis Sends Love Notes to Michael Cohen During His Testimony.

THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK: Michael Cohen Gets Destroyed During Cross Examination, Leaving Anderson Cooper Stunned.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Phelim McAleer’s Haunting ‘October 7’ Ignored by Press.

If there’s a play in New York City about one of the most horrific days in recent memory it might be a story. If said play requires a police presence to keep the stars and audience safe, that’s your lede.

Tell it to the mainstream media.

Read the whole thing.

NEEDS ANOTHER ZERO: California School District Settles $360K Lawsuit With Teacher Fired After Refusing To Use Students’ Preferred Pronouns.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: India makes breakthrough by test-firing new 3D-printed rocket engine.

HE NEVER CHANGES: Well, Bless Your Heart, Mitt Romney. “This is where I’d like to grab Romney by the lapel of his suitcoat, pull his face so close to mine I could see my reflection in his Brylcreem, and shout, ‘THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE IS BEHIND ALL THIS, YOU PREENING NINNY.'”

IF ONLY TRUMP WERE ALLOWED TO CAMPAIGN AND WOO THESE VOTERS: Black voters fleeing Biden and Democrats over inflation and extremism.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: LA Board Votes Taxpayer Funds for Anti-Israel UCLA Students’ Legal Aid.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA: Juno images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa suggest a subsurface ocean, wandering icy shell and rupturing plumes.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Kamala Harris’ Financials Confirm What You Thought About Her Books.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA:

WATCH: California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has ratcheted up his war on energy.

Newsom appointed Siva Gunda of the California Energy Commission.

Gunda just testified that state-run refineries are “on the table.” pic.twitter.com/L93qHOfXcO

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 15, 2024

Refinery capacity is already tight.

HMM: Robert Kennedy Is Crushing Ballot Access Expectations and Is Ready to Upend the 2024 Election.

BAILOUT NATION: China considers local government purchases of unsold homes.

China’s property sector has been in a deep slump for years, hit by a debt crisis among developers. Since 2022, waves of policy measures have failed to turn around the sector that represents around a fifth of the economy and remains a major drag on consumer spending and confidence.

Banks have been reluctant to heed Beijing’s repeated nudges to bolster credit to the embattled sector given the risks of more bad loans and continued weak sales. Home sales value of top 100 developers in April slid 45% from a year earlier, according to recent surveys published by CRIC, a major real estate information provider.

The Politburo of the Communist Party held a meeting on April 30, saying it would improve policies to clear mounting housing inventories.

Dozens of cities have offered subsidies to encourage residents to replace their old apartments with new ones, in order to sell their growing stock of new apartments and provide crucial cash-flow to ailing developers.

Local state-owned enterprises would be asked to help purchase unsold homes from distressed developers at steep discounts using loans provided by state banks, according to the report, adding that many of these homes would then be converted into affordable housing.

China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) are already models of Communist inefficiency and overloaded with existing debt, so I’m not sure how this is going to work.

LINCOLN BROWN: Colorado Town Tries to Shutter Church Homeless Ministry. “For Dys and the First Liberty Institute, the issue is about more than governmental overreach and a case of NIMBY. It is about the First Amendment. Dys told me that Castle Rock is attempting to force The Rock to cease and desist from pursuing its core mission. He added that the First Amendment means something and cannot be dismissed when a municipality says, ‘Because I said so.'”

I NEVER THOUGHT THEY WERE: Crypto-Libertarian Erik Voorhees Warns Your Chatbot Queries Are Not Safe. “In the best case that’s not that big of a deal, but in reality, what it means is – all your information – and essentially like parts of your mind like think your intellectual inquiries that you pursue – the things you think – the things you want to debate – the questions you have about life – and like big topics um can be known by Third parties.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Milestones on the Slippery Slope. “While you sip your coffee or eat your biscuits and gravy, let me draw your attention to a couple of stories that haven’t been on the radar this week.”

BORDER? WHAT BORDER?

EXCLUSIVE: Internal CBP data I obtained via FOIA request reveals 13 years of known gotaways data at the border, showing gotaways have *exploded* under the Biden admin compared to the Trump & Obama years.
This is the first time these numbers have ever been revealed.

FY2010… pic.twitter.com/LUQU5v87b2

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 15, 2024

This is not an accident.

More here.

MAID IN CANADA: Euthanasia Escapee Has a Dire Warning.

CONSUMERS GOT A BRIEF RESPITE FROM RISING INFLATION LAST MONTH BUT…: Wholesale prices rose 0.5% in April, more than expected. “Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the core PPI also rose 0.5% compared with the 0.2% Dow Jones estimate. Excluding trade services from that core group showed a 0.4% increase on the month and 3.1% on a 12-month basis, the highest level since April 2023.”

PPI is a leading indicator for consumer inflation.