THE LAST WORD ON SOTU: A Masterclass in Giving a Speech Without Giving a Speech.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
February 25, 2026
FASTER, PLEASE: Trump administration steps up efforts to scrutinize foreign funding of universities. “Officials declined to spell out specific examples of how foreign funding had unduly influenced higher education institutions, and said they were primarily seeking to boost compliance by the universities and improve transparency.”
IT WAS A HELLUVA SHOW:
Who ever the producer of tonight’s State of The Union broadcast is, has to be the biggest troll in America.
“Because they refused to call their daughter a boy” camera pans to this guy.
Says “Somali Pirates” cuts to Ilhan Omar. pic.twitter.com/kGFxbWdBqc
— The Questionable Gardner (@T_Q_Gardner) February 25, 2026
IT AIN’T OVER YET: Warner Bros. Discovery says Paramount made higher bid, board will weigh offer against Netflix deal.
Last week, WBD announced it would re-engage Paramount in deal talks under a seven-day waiver from Netflix. WBD and Netflix have an agreement to sell the legacy media group’s studio and streaming businesses to the streamer. Paramount is seeking to buy the entirety of WBD.
“Following engagement with PSKY during the seven-day limited waiver period, we received a revised PSKY proposal to acquire WBD, which we are reviewing in consultation with our financial and legal advisors,” WBD said in a statement. “We will update our shareholders following the Board’s review. The Netflix merger agreement remains in effect, and the Board continues to recommend in favor of the Netflix transaction. WBD shareholders are advised not to take any action at this time with respect to the amended PSKY tender offer.”
Paramount in a statement confirmed it had submitted a revised bid and said it will continue with its previously announced tender offer while the WBD board reviews both deals.
This is supposed to be Paramount’s “last best” offer, and Netflix will have up to four days to counter.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Gives GOP Blueprint for Midterms in Soaring SOTU Address. “After he wrapped up, I posted in the liveblog that this speech didn’t have the meandering bridge section near the middle that so many of his longer speeches do. It came in at just about two hours and brilliantly hit every note that there was to hit. It may seem weird to say it about a speech of that length, but there was an economy to it that made it effective.”
Much of the speech was more like a conversation — with the American people, with heroes in attendance, and even at times with surly Dems — that made the two hours fly.
HEH. THEY REALLY DID:
They did the meme pic.twitter.com/tpX8u6nsWT
— Prison Mitch (@Prisonmitch) February 25, 2026
HEADLINES FROM 1998: Microsoft Considered Harmful. “Microsoft has long had a reputation of an abusive company, all the way back to its origins, when Gary Kildall accused Bill Gates of stealing parts of CP/M for DOS. The list of lawsuits against Microsoft for anti-competitive or shady business business practices is so extensive it has its own Wikipedia article. But it’s latest moves to force both subscription models and AI into every nook and crevice of its software may be the final straws that break the Borg’s back, as longtime Windows users finally seem to be abandoning ship.”
AMAZING WHAT A LITTLE LIBERTY WILL DO:
BREAKING:
Official figures released today show that Argentina’s GDP grew by 4.4% in 2025.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) February 24, 2026
CORN, POPPED:
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Woman sues Don Lemon for emotional distress from the Minnesota church protest.
Details: https://t.co/gYxNANbR5k pic.twitter.com/x9iOhbxyEw
— TMZ (@TMZ) February 24, 2026
CHRIS BRAY: Gavin Newsom Is Playing A ‘Trump’ Character He Doesn’t Understand.
Newsom is not yet swaggering into campaign events in a wifebeater, but give him another week. The character he’s currently playing is a rude, crass, and transgressive, and not above dropping hints about coming up from the streets. Of Marin County, but whatever. If you haven’t seen what his hard-talking communications guy looks like, by the way, go take a look.
It’s a baffling performance, but last year the Bay Area lawyer and journalist Laura Powell gave us the key to understand it: Newsom is cargo culting, like a South Pacific islander watching the disappearance of military logistics efforts after World War II. “In isolated societies,” Powell wrote, “so-called cargo cults emerged when indigenous groups constructed imitation airstrips and towers, believing this would cause Western goods to descend from the skies as they once had, without understanding the actual forces that made the planes appear.” He’s performing a set of appearances, thinking that the images are the substance.
Men are turning away from the Democratic Party, so Newsom turned up last year on the podcast of Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL. As Powell noted, “Newsom laced his speech with curse words – roughly one per minute – and called Ryan ‘man’ or ‘brother’ with cringe-inducing frequency.” He talked a lot about football and guns, bro. Powell summarized the performance as Newsom “trying on a new mask.”
This year’s mask is modeled on the Shawn Ryan masculinity mask, but it’s a different version. It’s more directly a Donald Trump mask, but not quite: It’s a mask of what Gavin Newsom thinks Donald Trump is.
Both men were born into privilege, but Trump went on to create real estate and entertainment empires, while Newsom mismanaged a city for years and now an entire state.
FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Incompetent Olympics Chief Threatens to Fire Staffers in Mid News Conference.
February 24, 2026
THE LIVEBLOG IS ON: President Trump Set to Tout America First Successes in SOTU Address.
I’m drinking my go-to — the 10-year-old Jura — tonight, how about you?
REPUBLICANS POUNCE! As conservatives accuse Newsom of bigotry, California governor’s office slams ‘MAGA-manufactured outrage.’
Newsom’s nasty little comms guy also told a female reporter from RCP to “f*** off,” which somehow failed to make the CBS News report.
ICYMI: We Need to Talk About Artemis. “Things can’t continue like this.”
FASTER, PLEASE: FDA proposes new system for approving customized drugs and therapies for rare diseases. “It’s a shift long sought by patients, advocates and researchers focused on rare diseases, which often do not fit within the pharmaceutical industry’s business model or the FDA’s traditional drug-approval system.”
CHANGE: US military begins withdrawing from main base in northeast Syria, Syrian sources say. “Qasrak has been a main hub for the US-led global coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria, where US troops deployed over a decade ago, partnering with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the jihadist group. Kurdish forces agreed last month to integrate their institutions with Damascus.”
IF THERE’S A STRANGER TIMELINE THAN THIS ONE, I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ON IT:
DUDE ACCIDENTALLY FOUND THE CCP BACKDOOR. https://t.co/9sn1hhI2cs
— INVESTMENT HULK (@INVESTMENTSHULK) February 24, 2026
SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL. NEXT QUESTION? Are Democrats Working Against Their Own Voters?
WHICHEVER WAY THE (LUCRATIVE) WINDS BLOW:
It is uncanny how 2014 Tom Nichols, Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, et al sounded exactly like the people they call dangerous fascists today. https://t.co/pi9Gue4FZn
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) February 24, 2026
Also from Miller: “Trump was a permission structure for them. ‘Someone that bad can’t be the same as me, so I am not like him.’ So now they believe they can grift any way they want, because to them, he is always worse. See Tim Miller, Bulwark etc..”
Earlier (From Ed): The Atlantic’s Got a Fevah, and It Needs More Nazism!
NEOFEUDALISM: Illinois ranks near bottom in social mobility.
Ugaste told The Center Square. “Those who are in dire economic straits, giving them a handout, more SNAP benefits or putting them on Medicaid isn’t a help. That’s a safety net to help them get over a hump. We have to have good paying jobs with good benefits.”
With Archbridge Institute researchers defining social mobility as “the ability to better oneself and those around them,” based on such factors as institutions and rule of law, entrepreneurship and growth, education and skills development and social capital, Illinois now ranks 38th across the country, including behind at least five other midwestern states that were all ranked in the top quarter.
Data also points to the state’s ongoing struggles with economic growth, high regulations and persistent corruption by elected officials as some of the biggest drivers for its poor overall standing.
Illinois’ lowest rankings came on institutions and predatory state action at 49th, followed by entrepreneurship at 45th and judicial system quality at 40th.
Big Government is how the well-connected use state power to protect their status and freeze out any rabble who might otherwise become competitors.
“FLUSHING CHAGOS”: ‘Right Now, That Deal Is Worth Toilet Paper, Basically.’
As do the sad tales of the continued unraveling of all the excuses the Starmer government has offered for why the deal must go through.
For one thing, it’s dragged out long enough that Starmer’s Number One Guy in Washington to sell the deal to Trump, former British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, was arrested early this morning (our time) over his ties to?
None other than Jeffrey Epstein.
So much more at the link.