MILTON FRIEDMAN WOULD LIKE A WORD: Biden’s Comment About How to Bring Prices Down Reveals He Knows Nothing About Economics.

KRUISER: You Know Who Isn’t Complaining About Caitlin Clark’s Salary? Caitlin Clark.

HMM:

🚨💥 BREAKING: Explosion at BAE's 155mm artillery shell filling facility, Glascoed, in Wales!

This comes 2 days after there was a small fire at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania, which makes 155mm shell bodies.

BAE tells the Sun that there was an explosion at… pic.twitter.com/bAwgA1uWBK

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) April 17, 2024

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence…

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Another Example of How the Liberal Media Doesn’t Support Trump Getting a Fair Trial.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: New York City concerned about rise of rat urine-related illness and even death.

DENVER: Blue city mayor defunds police force by more than $8 million to aid migrants.

A Democrat-controlled city announced $45 million in funding for programs to help deal with the skyrocketing number of migrant arrivals it is facing, resulting in over $8 million in budget cuts for the police department.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced last week a package of $45.9 million to fully fund programs for “newcomers” for 2024 and avoid worst-case scenarios projected by the city. That’s in addition to $44 million in spending already secured for the program through previous budget moves.

Spending on migrants in the city skyrocketed last year from $2 million a month in August to $15 million in December. In January, migrant numbers peaked at around 5,000 in shelters but have since dropped to around 1,000, according to official figures.

“Newcomers,” LOL.

I must have spent 20 years making the drive up to Denver from Colorado Springs at least once a week to meet friends, have a nice dinner, go to a nightclub, etc. But that seems like a long time ago.

ARE WE SUPPOSED TO INFER FROM THEIR SILENCE THAT THEY ARE OBJECTIVELY PRO-GENOCIDE? 44 Democrats Refuse to Vote in Favor of Resolution Condemning the Chant ‘From the River to the Sea…’

AND JOE BIDEN’S BIG-MOUTHED FECKLESSNESS: The World Is Paying A Deadly Price For Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy.

ANALYSIS: TRUE (AND WITH RECEIPTS): NPR CEO Katherine Maher Is a Censor-Happy Parody of Wokeness.

MARKETING: Alan Ritchson Doubles Down on Cops, Attacks DeSantis.

Alan Ritchson has a funny way of promoting movies.

The star behind “Reacher” hits the big screen once more Friday with “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” The Guy Ritchie romp, loosely based on true events, casts him as a World War II-era soldier battling the Nazi menace.

Instead, he’s spent the last few weeks attacking:

• Christians
• Donald Trump
• Law enforcement

And, now, he’s expanding his target list to include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

That’s from Christian Toto, who also noted on Twitter/X: “He has a movie opening nationwide Friday. So, naturally, he’s alienating as many groups of moviegoers as possible!”

Actors, as a group, never struck me as particularly bright. But studios at least used to know how to manage their actors’ PR.

NOT THE SETUP TO A JOKE: A Shirtless Acrobat Walked Into a Christian Men’s Conference — Then It Got Weird.

WOEING: Boeing whistleblower says 787 fleet should be grounded. “The letter outlined problems with the production of the company’s 787 and 777 jets, saying specifically that sections of the fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner are improperly fastened together and could break after thousands of trips. Salehpour told the agency these issues were the result of changes to the fitting and fastening of sections in the assembly line and alleged that the concerns were brushed off.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Hope this guy doesn’t commit suicide. There’s a lot of that going around.

INSIDERS REVEAL: Everything You Feared About TikTok Is True.

HORSE, BARN DOOR: US to hit Iran with new sanctions in “coming days”, Yellen says.

“With respect to sanctions, I fully expect that we will take additional sanctions action against Iran in the coming days,” Yellen said told a news conference on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington.

“We don’t preview our sanctions tools. But in discussions I’ve had, all options to disrupt terrorist financing of Iran continue to be on the table,” Yellen added.
She said that the Treasury and State Department have taken previous action to contain Iran’s “destabilizing” behavior by diminishing its ability to export oil.

“Clearly, Iran is continuing to export some oil. There may be more that we could do. I don’t want to preview our actual sanctions activities, but certainly that remains in focus as a possible area that we could address.”

Even if the White House restored the Trump sanctions Biden never should have dropped (although I doubt they will), they can’t take back the billions Biden delivered to them, nor all the weapons they bought and terrorists they paid.

BILLIONS FOR ASTROTURF: It Won’t Surprise You to Know Who Is Bailing Out Palestinian Bridge Blockers.

SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX targeting Wednesday-Thursday launch doubleheader from Cape Canaveral in Florida. “Though SpaceX has not publicly announced these missions, Federal Aviation Administration and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency navigational warnings indicate two rocket launch windows are planned within a roughly 24-hour span.”

SpaceX isn’t quite on track to hit the company’s goal of 144 launches this year — or at least not yet.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Nothing Is Going to Bump Jill Biden From the Elder Abuse Train. “Yes, this is another discussion about Joe Biden being addled, embarrassing, and a detriment to the security of the country. These are tough to avoid because Joe Biden is, after all, addled, embarrassing, and a detriment to the security of the country.”

GUY BENSON: ‘Don’t:’ Biden’s Failed Foreign Policy Legacy.

Biden campaigned on competency, restoring calm in the wake of Trump’s turbulence, and reigniting supposedly waning global respect for the United States. After the Afghanistan debacle, adversaries viewed Biden as weak, incoherent and doddering. Allies viewed America with suspicion and concern about our commitment to promises. And enemies were emboldened. On several high-profile occasions, Biden and top officials in his administration have looked into the camera and issued a simple warning: “Don’t.” This failed spectacularly at the southern border, where policies and actions spoke much louder than empty words, resulting in ten million illegal crossings on Biden’s watch. Prior to his disastrous invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin received numerous warnings against launching the war. But Biden’s ‘don’t’ was undermined by another presidential comment.

Intentionally or not, Biden eqiuivocated in a key moment, perhaps helping to convince Putin that Western resolve against his revanchist designs would ultimatley crumble. Biden had apparently given Russia a preemptive opening, suggesting that a small invasion might not be the worst thing. About a month later, a full invasion arrived, exacting a terrible human toll.

Over recent months, Iran-backed terrorists had been launching dozens of attacks against US interests and personnel in the Middle East. Biden’s message to them was, “don’t.” Undeterred, they kept doing. Americans got killed. Prior to Iran’s unprecedented direct attack against Israel on Saturday, Biden issued another “don’t” that was ignored, perhaps because he back-channeled another “minor incursion”-style asterisk to Tehran.

Biden is full of bluster but weak. The world knows this and acts accordingly.

Previously: Donald Trump Tells John Daly He Threatened To Bomb Moscow If Putin Invaded Ukraine.

“It’s like they’re afraid of him. You know, he was a friend of mine. I got along great with him. I say, ‘Vladimir, if you do it, we’re hitting Moscow.’ And he sort of believed me, in like 5%, 10%, that’s all you need.”

That’s how it’s done.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Winston Churchill Gets the Last Word on Islam.

YOU DON’T SAY: Fed Chair Powell says there has been a ‘lack of further progress’ this year on inflation.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. economy, while otherwise strong, has not seen inflation come back to the central bank’s goal, pointing to the further unlikelihood that interest rate cuts are in the offing anytime soon.

Speaking to a policy forum focused on U.S.-Canada economic relations, Powell said that while inflation continues to make its way lower, it hasn’t moved quickly enough, and the current state of policy should remain intact.

“More recent data shows solid growth and continued strength in the labor market, but also a lack of further progress so far this year on returning to our 2% inflation goal,” the Fed chief said during a panel talk.

“Lack of further progress” is a funny way of saying, “Inflation spent the first three months accelerating toward a 5% annual rate or higher.”

HEH: Justice Gorsuch Throws Shade at Jamaal Bowman During J6 Hearing, and It’s Glorious.

SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Top Astronomers Gather to Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About the Universe.

“We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date,” he added. “More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers.”

A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe’s growth in significant ways.

Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is “lopsided” after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.

The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

“It would mean that two-thirds of the universe has just disappeared,” Sarkar told The Guardian.

Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe’s expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.

“We have great data” is a great thing to have to start with.

TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: ¿Qué? Why Do Flyers in Mexico Encourage Illegals to Vote for Biden?

SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH: In World First, Scientists Share What Was Almost Certainly a Conversation with Humpback a Whale.

VICTORIA TAFT: This Is the Biggest Head-Shaking Issue in the ‘Bogus’ NYC Case Against Trump. “Bragg’s legal theory is that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Yes, really. Clinton won nearly two to one in Bragg’s state of New York, but there’s something even more odd going on here than the fact that he bases his state case on other states’ electoral outcomes.”