December 12, 2025

SOMALI PIRATES UPDATE:

Full interview here.

I’m so old, I can remember flying with large amounts of cash was a surefire way to trigger the authorities: Carrying A Lot Of Cash Through TSA Comes With One Unpleasant Risk.

If you’re like lots of folks, paying for something means pulling out your card or phone and tapping away. Same thing goes for traveling abroad, even in countries typically overlooked by travelers in lieu of big-name destinations like Italy or Spain, cash seems to be less and less common. Nonetheless, cards aren’t universal. As a traveler, having some cash is still a good backup in case your cards stop working — just don’t carry too much. If you’ve got over $10,000 on you when you’re trying to cross country borders, you’re going to have to declare it to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The idea of carrying $10,000 in your wallet may seem ridiculous to plenty of people. Especially considering that a cash amount of $50 to $100 per day per person is considered generally reasonable for a vacation. But if you do have loads of cash on you for some reason, $10,000 is the United States’ threshold for declaration. Within the national borders of the U.S., like crossing from state to state, you don’t have to declare your money. However, when traveling in or out of the U.S., you do.

And: More Than $100K Seized After K-9 Officer At Dallas Love Field Airport Sniffs Out Bag.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Rise of the Mamdani Clones. “After the 2024 humiliation, the left is back. It could hurt the party in 2026.”

The left’s zeal is also propelling candidates into open and battleground races—no matter the general-election risks. Maine Rep. Jared Golden clung to his rural Maine district by less than 1 point as Mr. Trump won it by 10 last year, and only via a pragmatic voting record. The primary to replace him features two avowed progressives, racing to the left. And progressives are stacking up cash and endorsements in primaries to take on the most vulnerable Republicans in battleground states from Pennsylvania to Arizona and Wisconsin. In the contest to challenge vulnerable Republican California Rep. David Valadao, school-board activist Randy Villegas is using a Sanders endorsement and dollars to outpower moderate state Rep. Jasmeet Bains.

The risks of the Sanders takeover were further highlighted in Texas this week, when former Rep. Colin Allred was pressured out of a Senate run, to clear the decks for uber-progressive Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Mr. Allred, a former NFL linebacker, lost to Sen. Ted Cruz last year by 8 points, significantly outperforming Kamala Harris. Democrats have their best shot at a statewide office in Texas in years, given the general electoral climate and a bloody GOP primary between Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Ms. Crockett still must beat state House member James Talarico, but backing for her is pouring in and Democrats face the real prospect that their “best” shot will be in the hands of a freshman Democrat who has clawed her way to notoriety through creative slanging matches.

Lost in all this maneuvering was the release of a recent report from a center-left group, Welcome, which Semafor reports “consulted hundreds of thousands of voters over six months for its broad findings, including that 70% of voters think the Democratic Party is ‘out of touch’ ” on issues ranging from transgenderism to climate—everything the reascendant progressive left stands for.

Well, they are. But that doesn’t mean the GOP can play dead and expect to win.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

OPEN SOURCE:

Full story here, complete with instructions on how to follow the ships yourself.

Posted at 12:32 pm by Stephen Green

TIME MAGAZINE’s 2025 MAN OF THE YEAR CONTINUES TO KNOCK IT OUT OF THE PARK: Washington Post’s AI-generated podcasts rife with errors, fictional quotes.

The Washington Post’s top standards editor Thursday decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists.

Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobile app. In a release, the paper said users will be able to choose preferred topics and AI hosts, and could “shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts and soon even ask questions using our Ask The Post AI technology.”

But less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source’s quotes as the paper’s position on an issue.

Which means that the WaPo’s AI is currently behaving like most flesh-and-blood journalists at the WaPo. And as Glenn wrote last year after Google’s AI declared that we are all National Socialists now (classical allusion), “Of course, the thing about AI is that AI keeps getting better, while people stay about the same.  (Indeed, there’s some evidence that the average person is getting dumber, which if true will only close the gap faster.)  At a sufficiently advanced level of technology, AI will be super-effective at manipulating people, and they won’t even know they’re being manipulated.” So AI should continue to clear the gap between man and machine at the WaPo surprisingly quickly.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

KRUISER: Dems Would Last Maybe 5 Minutes in the Civil War They Think They Want. “All of the posturing and potty-mouthing in front of friendly audiences has given the Democrats the mistaken impression that they actually are tough. It’s mostly amusing, especially given the fact that fey soy boy Gavin Newsom is their highest polling ‘fighter’ right now.”

Posted at 12:15 pm by Stephen Green

THIS:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WEAKNESS BEGETS AGGRESSION: China Is Quietly Breaking America’s Pacific Defense Chain.

China is methodically chipping away at America’s Pacific defense architecture, and Yap’s Woleai airfield is the latest warning sign.

Despite the Federated States of Micronesia’s Compact of Free Association with Washington, Beijing has secured a deal to refurbish the airfield—just 450 miles from Guam.

That puts a potential dual-use Chinese facility inside the second island chain, complicating U.S. plans for agile air dispersal in a Taiwan war.

Naval expert Brent Sadler argues that Interior, regional commands, and legal advisers have all failed to enforce CoFA protections, risking billions in U.S. investments and eroding America’s positional advantage in Micronesia.

We paid for those islands with American blood. China is buying them with American dollars.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

ROBERT SPENCER: ‘Minnesota Somalis Are as Minnesotan as Tater-Tot Hotdish,’ But There’s Just One Catch. “The Center for Immigration Studies revealed Wednesday that ‘nearly every Somali household with children (89 percent) receives some form of welfare.’ Even worse, ‘altogether, 81 percent of Somali households consume some form of welfare, compared to 21 percent of native households.’ Nor does this dependency lessen with time: ‘Somalis with 10 years of residency have welfare consumption rates that are only marginally lower than the Somali population as a whole.'”

Posted at 10:11 am by Stephen Green