THERE HE GOES AGAIN, REBUILDING OUR TATTERED FOREIGN RELATIONS: Biden’s Absence at ASEAN Summit Seen as Snub to Southeast Asia.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Meet the Avowed Marxist Who Decides What Books Go in Your School Library.

WELL, YEAH — WE SQUANDERED OUR MILITARY AND POLITICAL CAPITAL: U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working.

TONIGHT WE’RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT’S 2020: Hypocrite Biden Already Violated White House Masking Protocol.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Credit card and car loan defaults hit 10-year high as inflation squeezes families.

Here’s the official spin, courtesy (as always) of the Washington Post: “The federal deficit is projected to roughly double this year, as bigger interest payments and lower tax receipts widen the nation’s spending imbalance despite robust overall economic growth.” [Emphasis added.]

Biden’s deficit spending is the growth. Unlike genuine economic growth, Bidenomics is going to leave us with a multitrillion-dollar hangover and a nasty correction when either the spending runs out or the inflation really kicks in.

THE WHIGS WOULD LIKE A WORD: The GOP Is in Danger of Becoming the Pac-12 of Political Parties.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX stacks giant Starship rocket ahead of 2nd test flight.

The work represents a major milestone ahead of an impending test flight, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk says can happen whenever the required regulatory boxes get checked.

“Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] license approval,” Musk wrote Tuesday in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that included a 40-second video capturing highlights of the stacking process.

I hope I’m wrong, but I’m expecting more foot-dragging by the FAA to punish Musk for freeing Twitter.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: Kamala Harris Says She ‘May Have to Take Over,’ and This Is Why I Drink.

Plus:

• The mask whingers have escalated to eugenics.
• We had to destroy the study to publish it.
• Biden stages a walkout on a Medal of Honor recipient.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

JOE KLEIN: Hidin’ Biden.

For those of us who spent time in Afghanistan, the endgame came as no surprise. I made several visits to a once-crucial town called Sanjaray in Zhari District where a series of American Army Captains learned these truths: that the local leaders were thoroughly compromised by the Taliban, that the local people couldn’t distinguish us from the last invaders, the Russians; that the Afghan civilians were happy—grateful, really—for any help we could give them; and everyone, especially the Talibs, knew we would eventually leave. A mixed message to be sure. But no surprise when the Afghan “army,” which we’d spent billions funding, evaporated in the face of the Taliban offensive. It turned out that almost everybody in the Afghan establishment had made the same calculation as the local warlord in Sanjaray—his name was Hajji Lala: they all had secret deals with the Taliban.

How could Biden not know this? How could he not plan for it? Why did he abandon Bagram, the massive American airbase that might have been a less chaotic staging area for our evacuation than the commercial airport in Kabul?

Flashback: “F— that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it,” Biden said in 2010.

That’s not what happened in Vietnam but it hardly matters because Biden is a callous SOB who doesn’t give a damn for anyone other than Joe Biden, except to the extent that they can deliver to the Big Guy.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Price of Truth. “I was the first blogger I know of to get demonetized by Google — and the irony is that I wasn’t even making any money at it.”

COSMIC REFLUX: Black holes keep ‘burping up’ stars they destroyed years earlier, and astronomers don’t know why.

YOUR SPEECH IS VIOLENCE BUT THEIR VIOLENCE IS JUST SPEECH: Over 60 Domestic Terrorists Face RICO Charges Over Protests Against ‘Cop City.’ “Goons with ties to both Antifa and Stacey Abrams disrupted church services where employees of the contractor were worshiping and firebombed a daycare center near the site, but tensions rose to new heights in January when a group of terrorists fired at law enforcement officers clearing the site of squatters. One thug fired at a state trooper, so police shot back and killed him.”

THERE’S NOTHING LESS AFFORDABLE THAN ANYTHING GOVERNMENT TRIES TO MAKE MORE AFFORDABLE: The $53,000 Connection: The High Cost of High-Speed Internet for Everyone.

Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe has long been stuck with sluggish internet service. The federal government plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable—at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected.

That amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the homes getting hookups, property records show. While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy.

“The problem is, money is not infinite,” said Blair Levin, a senior communications policy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations who is now an equity research analyst. “If you’re spending $50,000 to connect a very remote location, you have to ask yourself, would we be better off spending that same amount of money to connect [more] families?”

The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the “Internet for All” program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas.

Plus: “In Montana, laying fiber-optic cable to some remote locations could cost more than $300,000 per connection, said Misty Ann Giles, director of Montana’s Department of Administration. Building to those places would empty the state’s coffers, she said: ‘That’s when we might not reach everyone.'”

Ya think?

Private Enterprise: Rural users in most places in the US can get Starlink up and running for $599 in hardware, do-it-yourself installation in most cases, and $120 a month for high-speed service.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Quid Pro Here You Go—Lefties Hit With RICO Charges by Georgia AG. “American leftists, on the other hand, see themselves as immune to the kinds of ills they enjoy seeing others suffer. The attorney general in Georgia just provided a lesson in how wrong they are.”

COLORADO: Teachers union to teachers: Destroy evidence of student gender identity surveys.

A Colorado affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, told its teachers to destroy any evidence of having given students a gender identity survey, according to a recent report.

CBS Colorado notes that while the JeffCo Public Schools district says it is “unclear” whether surveys about “preferred pronouns” are in violation of state law, it advised teachers against using them as lawsuits are ongoing.

Federal and state law forbid mandatory surveys that ask about kids’ “protected information,” and voluntary surveys must include a parent opt-out.

But an email from the Jefferson County Education Association told teachers that if they give such surveys, to make sure to they are pencil and paper … because “any digital records are more permanent and may be requested under federal law.”

The email also “encouraged” teachers to “make […] notations about students and not hold on to the documents.”

This kind of thing doesn’t happen and it’s none of your business when it does.

WASHINGTON IS PUTTING THE MINIMUM VISA PAYMENT ON THE MASTERCARD: The New U.S. Deficit Numbers Are Simply Breathtaking.

BATTLESWARM: The Cardboard Drone Dilemma. “Uncle Sam is the operator of billion dollar B-2s and fleet supercarriers. Enemies capable of getting cheap drones within striking distance of those assets could put a world of hurt on the Pentagon.”

A military analyst account I follow on Twitter noted that American jets (mostly) own the airspace above 3,000 feet but that drones (not necessarily ours) own the airspace below. That was a year or more ago and, at best, the situation hasn’t improved.

ATHENA THORNE: Big Left May Already Have Its Poster Victim for the 2024 Riot Season. “A quick scan of current stories at PJ Media shows that my colleagues are already tracking Big Left’s efforts to ratchet the COVID Emergency!!! back up. Meanwhile, I’m keeping my eyes on the mob machine. A little over a year out from the existentially crucial U.S. elections, some familiar conditions are already being set up. The narrative is being established, and the troops are mustering.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: ‘Rat tours’ boom in rodent-infested New York.

As the city grapples with a major rat problem – sightings doubled last year, prompting the mayor to advertise for a “somewhat bloodthirsty” head rat-catcher in December – the rodent issue is, according to some, New York’s latest must-experience trend.

As visitors to New York demand rat action, some of the city’s tour guides have started to add stops at notoriously infested sites, the New York Post reported this week.

It means that rat tourism is fast becoming a boom industry. Kenny Bollwerk, who built a TikTok following by posting videos from around New York, stumbled upon being a rodent guide when he spent “an hour or two” live-streaming rats running around outside a building site in Sunnyside, Queens.

“I was like: ‘Damn, this is bad,’” he said.

Maybe now is the time to see New York City before we’re forced to wall it off.

FOR ALL THEY’RE WORTH, I HOPE: Mother Sues School District Over Secret Gender Transition That Led to Her Daughter Being Trafficked.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Three Years Later, Trump Deserves A Nobel Peace Prize For The Abraham Accords.

Unmentioned is Mike Pompeo, who was our best Secretary of State since George Schultz but, like Trump, really needed another four years to cement his legacy.

THE FIX IS IN: Barack Obama Could Play a Key Role in Biden Corruption Investigation.

YOU DON’T SAY: BMW Warns Gasoline Car Ban Poses ‘Imminent Risk’ To European Automakers.

The EU’s pledge to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars and vans from 2035 poses an “imminent risk” to Europe’s car manufacturers, which are unlikely to win a looming EV price war with their Chinese competitors, BMW chairman Oliver Zipse has told the Financial Times.

“I want to send a message: I see that as an imminent risk,” Zipse said.

The executive, however, said BMW was in a better position to compete with the Chinese manufacturers, most of which are targeting buyers of cheaper and smaller electric vehicles.

Yet, “The base car market segment will either vanish or will not be done by European manufacturers,” Zipse told FT.

European Union member states in March approved an emissions regulation under which the bloc will end sales of new carbon dioxide-emitting cars and vans in 2035.

The actual point, of course, is to sell as few cars and vans for private use as possible. I’m not sure Europe’s leaders ever got over losing their serfs tied forever to the land — a mode of thinking picked up by our own “betters.”

I MISS THE INNOCENCE OF THE INTERNET’S EARLY DAYS: The Truth Costs Money.

YES: Help boys aspire to ‘heroic masculinity.’ “Heroic masculinity ‘is almost entirely taken for granted, even reviled, until trouble comes and it is ungratefully demanded by the very people who usually decry it,’ she writes. As a group, men ‘are larger, faster, and stronger than women.’ Each man is faced with a moral question: How will he use his strength?”