FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr: If Our Investigation Concludes That Disney Is Using Racial and Sex Discrimination In Its Hiring (Which It Definitely Is), We'll Yank ABC's Broadcast License

—Ace

That's a serious threat.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has opened a formal investigation into Disney over allegations that its DEI-driven hiring practices at ABC may violate federal equal employment regulations. If proven, the infractions could put ABC's broadcast license at risk, Carr said Monday during a Fox News interview. The move comes amid the 47th President Donald Trump's broader crackdown on DEI programs across government and private institutions.

Key Details:

Carr said hiring decisions allegedly made based on race and gender "go to the character qualifications" required for FCC licensing.

The investigation is focused on whether ABC's parent company, Disney, used racial and gender quotas or "race-defined affinity groups" in employment decisions.

This probe follows a similar FCC investigation into Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, launched last month.

Diving Deeper:

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Monday signaled that ABC's broadcast license could be in jeopardy if an ongoing investigation confirms that the network, through its parent company Disney, violated federal law by using race and gender-based hiring practices.

Appearing on Fox News's The Story, Carr stated, "If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that's a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license."

The investigation, which Carr initiated Friday, zeroes in on Disney's internal DEI framework and whether it conflicts with FCC's equal employment opportunity (EEO) regulations. Under these rules, broadcasters are prohibited from making employment decisions based on protected characteristics such as race and gender. "The evidence we have so far indicates potentially that Disney and ABC were making employment decisions based on race and gender," Carr said, referencing alleged quotas and "race-defined affinity groups."

...

Carr also hinted that Disney may have rebranded some DEI programs without altering the underlying policies. In his letter to the company, he noted that the FCC's enforcement division would follow up on whether such changes were superficial attempts to evade regulatory scrutiny.

The probe into Disney mirrors a similar investigation the FCC launched into Comcast just weeks ago, raising questions about how widespread such practices may be within legacy media corporations. Carr emphasized in letters to both companies that the FCC's role is to ensure broadcast license holders are not promoting "invidious forms of discrimination."

Speaking of doling out high-paying gigs to people based not on talent but on skin color:

This is a good place to sneak in an update on Snow Woke.

The son of the film's producer defended his father's reluctant efforts to stop Rachel Zegler from tanking the film with her constant divisive political sloganeering by saying, "Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged."

Well, coincidentally, a fellow actress who appeared with her in the similarly-disastrous West Side Story posted that same quote.

On Tuesday, Ariana DeBose, 34, posted a now-deleted Instagram post slamming her "West Side Story" co-star Rachel Zegler, 23 over the latter's "Snow White" controversy.

The original post that the "Hamilton" actress displayed on her Instagram was a quote saying, "Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged."

After that initial post, DeBose said in a follow-up, "I post quotes all the time and thought this one was meaningful. Will fully cop to the fact I did not do any research on where this quote came from, nor did I know of the connection until it was pointed out to me."

LOL shyeah sure, you didn't know the quote was about your West Side Story co-star when you posted it.

The actress won an Oscar for her supporting role as Anita in Steven Spielberg's 2021 adaptation of "West Side Story." Zegler starred as Maria in that film.

"I have no intention of inserting myself into a news cycle," DeBose added in her follow-up post. "This is not the first time I've posted about dealing with narcissism and it probably won't be the last, but next time I'll be sure to clarify its origins first."

Uh-huh.

Check out who's a big fan of Rachel Zegler: Hollywood's current favorite low-talent leftwing agitator Pedro Pascal.

...

On Sunday, Pedro Pascal, 49, posted a photo of Zegler on his Instagram Stories, tagging her and adding the caption, "icon." Meanwhile, John Lennon's son, Sean, slammed Zegler as a "brat."

I can't wait until Fantastic Four bombs so that Hollywood stops casting this flabby dadbod acne-scarred dead-eyed Charisma Vacuum in every damn movie.

How Do "Civil Servants" and "Non-Profit" Personnel Become So Insanely Rich? Simple, They're Just Stealing Public Money and Calling Themselves Heroes for It

—Ace

This goes on in every single NGO. Leftist government functionaries send billions of dollars to their leftist pals who run these embezzlement factories, knowing that when they exit government they will get put on the board of an NGO and get paid off themselves.

Minnesota food bank CEO steps down as legislators question her $721K salary

Second Harvest Heartland defended its executive compensation and financial stewardship, but some legislators are concerned by the "out of control" salaries at nonprofits requesting public dollars.

Minnesota's hunger crisis is growing--and apparently so is the appetite for big executive pay at one of the state's top food nonprofits.

"Nonprofit" just means that none of the money will go to shareholders. It will all be poured into the bank accounts of the principals running the "nonprofit."

Allison O'Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, earned $721,000 in total compensation in 2022--even as the nonprofit has lobbied for taxpayer funding and warned of rising hunger across Minnesota, where 26% of households with children are food insecure, according to its own research.

Now, as O'Toole steps down after six years at the helm, lawmakers are raising questions.

Now? Oh right, this is Communist-Held Minnesota, which, let's face it, we should just make officially part of Canada already.

Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing, told Alpha News that O'Toole's salary issue first surfaced during a recent "food day" at the Capitol, when food shelf representatives, including O'Toole, testified before the House Children and Families Committee.

"Rep. Bjorn Olson pulled the 990 [tax form] and shared Allison O'Toole's salary with our committee members right before she testified," Altendorf said. "That's when the questions started."

Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, later raised the issue during a March 17 House committee hearing where a DFL lawmaker questioned why a GOP bill was reducing funding for Second Harvest Heartland in a proposed agriculture budget.

"It looks like the base funding for Second Harvest Heartland is $3.4 million and you reduce it by $900,000 in both the first biennium and the tails," said Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids.

But Rarick said she thinks the organization "can handle it."

"They do have a $260 million, that's their gross revenue," she said during the hearing. "What's even more interesting, I think, is that their CEO, their top person, makes $721,000. Yeah, $721,000 is the top person ... and they have 10 people that make more than the governor, which is more than $150,000. So that's well over $2.6 million in their highest-paid people."

About a week after the salary figures were brought up at the committee hearing, Second Harvest announced O'Toole's resignation.

...

Altendorf also pointed to what she sees as a deeper issue. She says the nonprofit hired a "voter engagement coordinator" in 2024 to conduct get-out-the-vote efforts--something she calls "a huge conflict of interest" for an organization receiving taxpayer dollars.

"The public is waking up to the money funneling system happening within the Minnesota state government," Altendorf said. "And I'm hearing loud and clear--taxpayers have had enough."

Trump Nears the Record for Reductions in the Federal Workforce as Jobs Growth Comes In, Get This, Above "Expectations"

—Ace

Cut the fat.

The Trump administration's efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce appear on pace to surpass the record workforce reductions under the Clinton administration. The rapid-fire restructuring of major federal agencies, mass terminations, buyouts, and resignations, however, could see him achieve in mere months more than Clinton did in eight years.

During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton reduced the size of the federal civilian workforce from roughly 2.2 million to 1.8 million, largely through federal buyouts. Upper estimates put the figure at 426,200 federal jobs eliminated. That reduction stands as the largest cut to the federal headcount since World War II.

Civilian workforce figures exclude military personnel and United States Postal Service (USPS) and most totals refer to executive branch employees, who make up the lion's share of the federal payroll. Those employees are also the administration's top priority for cuts as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk works to axe trillions in spending from the budget.

Early in this second Trump administration, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) coordinated a large-scale federal buyout, offering employees the option of resigning to secure pay through Sept. 30.

The administration said that about 75,000 employees took the offer, accounting for roughly 3% of the 2.3 million federal civilian employees. Trump had hoped for as many as 5%-10% to take the deal and several major agencies have begun to offer a second round of buyouts, hoping that the ongoing terminations will make employees less hesitant to accept.

...

Trump will still need to reduce the headcount by roughly 200,000 to break the Clinton record. Assessing the exact figure of firings under Trump thus far is difficult, in no small part due to the intervention of judges who have delayed or ordered the reversal of some.

The cuts to the federal workforce did not, as leftists claim, harm the economy. In fact, they seem to have increased economic activity in the private sector, which is the sector where we want job growth.

March's Jobs Report crushed expectations, which was good news in and of itself BUT when you look at the report by the numbers, it's even better. Remember during the Biden years how they'd make a big deal about how many jobs they added and then we'd find out a couple of weeks later it was wrong or that the numbers added were government jobs?

Yeah.

That is not the case now under Trump.

Take a look:

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47

JOBS REPORT by the numbers:

- 228,000 jobs added, beating expectations by 88,000.
- 459,000 increase in full time workers.
- 209,000 increase in private employment.
- 13,000 increase in construction jobs.
- 22,900 increase in transportation & warehousing jobs.
- 23,700 increase in retail trade jobs.
- 232,000 increase in the labor force.
- 4,000 decline in federal government jobs.

The public supports Trump's deportations:

CBS Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Americans Support Trump's Mass Deportations

A majority of Americans support President Donald Trump's mass deportation program, a new poll from CBS News finds.

About 58 percent of American adults told CBS pollsters that they approve of Trump's program to "find and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally," while 42 percent said they disapprove.

Most significantly, 56 percent of swing voters support Trump's deportation program, as well as 93 percent of Republicans. Likewise, majorities of white non-college-educated Americans, 69 percent, and white college-educated Americans, 56 percent, support the deportations.

Hispanic Americans are a bit more split on the issue, with 47 percent approving of Trump's deportations and 53 percent opposing.

Trump's immigration policies, poll after poll has found, remain largely popular with Americans.

The left is pushing what is essentially a push-poll that asks: Do you support Trump illegally and mistakenly sending law-abiding American citizens to El Salvadoran torture prisons?

This juiced question basically boils down to "Do you agree that bad deportations are bad?" and forces the answer that the left wants to claim indicates that Americans oppose the deportations.

For the next story, keep in mind that the media routinely scolds Americans that they're not allowed to have opinions on major political questions of the day because they're not "experts." Also note that media personnel usually have degrees in liberal arts and crafts subjects, or in "journalism," which is not a degree that confers any expertise in any subject matter "journalists" routinely offer their opinions about, suggesting that those opinions are expert and authoritative.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper will scold you for saying that Kamala Harris sounds drunk or Biden is exhibiting the signs of senility, insisting that you cannot judge what drunk people sound like without a degree in neurology and organic chemistry, and you cannot spot someone slurring their words and losing their train of thought due to age-related dementia without advanced degrees in neurology and elder care.

So, NBC wanted an Authoritative Expert to trash Trump's reciprocal tariffs, and they found a... nurse to render her expert opinion on tariff policy,.

Don't worry, though -- her great grandfather was a congressman who passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and as you know, "expertise" is passed on by genetics whenever the media decides it is.

NBC News @NBCNews

Her great-grandfather was behind the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act -- which many economic historians believe worsened the Great Depression. She thinks Trump's tariffs are "terrible."

Speaking of spotting intoxicated people, Kamala Harris has "finally" spoke out against Trump, and the media is giddy. This, they deem, is a "stunning" event, almost as stunning as the Fiercely Heterosexual (TM) Cory Booker standing on his feet and blabbing for twenty-four hours.

And Kamala sounds like she knocked back a few schnapps before speaking.

In my Non-Jake-Tapper-Certified Expert Opinion on detecting slurring.

Trump Fires NSA Director, His Deputy, and Six Other NSA Staffers; Speculation Is That Laura Loomer Showed Trump Evidence That They Were Disloyal Biden Holdovers Undermining His Executive Authority

—Ace

Finally we're getting the "You're Fired's" we were promised in 2016.

The director of the National Security Agency, Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, reportedly was fired Thursday from his post as the head of the agency.

Haugh's removal as director of the NSA, the nation's primary cyber espionage and electronic eavesdropping agency, comes on the same day at least three White House National Security Council staffers reportedly also were shown the door.

The ousted NSA director's civilian deputy, Wendy Noble, was also let go Thursday, according to the Washington Post, citing current and former US officials.

Noble was reassigned to a role within the Pentagon's Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, according to the outlet.

The reason behind the NSA shakeup is unknown, the US officials told the outlet.

Haugh, who also serves as the Pentagon's Cyber Command chief, had led the NSA since February 2024.

...

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, slammed Haugh's dismissal.

The fact that Mark Warner and, as you'll see below, Martha Raddatz are protesting these firings is all the proof I need they are eminently justified and critical.

"General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" Warner wrote on X.

The senator also took aim at President Trump -- referencing reports that the firings of National Security Council staffers came shortly after he took a meeting with right-wing influencer Laura Loomer.

"It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app -- even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office," Warner wrote in a separate post.

Loomer is a loon but crazy people do sometimes use their obsessiveness to dig up facts. Once again, the left is sputtering about who brought the information to Trump as a way to attack the information. Musk isn't firing people at DOGE; he brings the info to Trump, and Trump fires them.

But they fixate on Musk "not being elected."

Seems like the same jive here with Loomer. If Loomer brought Trump this information, it was still the duly elected-and-sworn president who read it and found it credible and took appropriate action.

As promised, crag-faced Baba Yaga and weepy Deep State nostalgist Martha Raddatz broke out her quaking Cry-Voice over the firings, which pretty much cinches it that they all leak to her.

Unbelievably, Joe Biden Spent Millions on an EPA Museum to Propandize to People How Much the EPA Has Done for Them

—Ace

Thankfully, it did little propagandizing because who on earth would go to the "EPA Museum."

These people demented space aliens. They have no conception of how actual humans think.

Real humans do not go to Museums of Bureaucracy.

I used to laugh at conspiracy theories about "the Reptilians."

Now I want to know more.

EPA Museum -- Yes, One Actually Existed -- Shuttered After Zeldin Calls Out Massive Funding, Lack of Visitors

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under Administrator Lee Zeldin, has decided to close the National Environmental Museum and Education Center, a project launched during the Biden administration, Fox News reports.

Despite its mission to "highlight environmental achievements," the museum struggled to attract visitors leaving taxpayers with a hefty bill for a largely empty space. Even with free admission, relatively no one could find any desire to walk through the doors. Although the lack of visitors is likely not surprising anyone, the money being poured into the museum just might.

The museum, located at the EPA headquarters near the White House, opened in May 2024 with the goal of celebrating America's environmental progress. Former EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan envisioned it as a space to honor bipartisan efforts to protect public health and the environment. However, the museum saw fewer than 2,000 visitors in its first nine months, which some may call pathetic.

Taxpayers had invested $4 million to bring the museum up to Smithsonian standards, with an additional $600,000 per year required for upkeep. That worked out to about $315 per visitor--a price tag that Zeldin and his team argue cannot be justified.

According to Zeldin's EPA, the museum leaned heavily on themes like "environmental justice" and climate change, which critics argued felt more like partisan messaging than an inclusive celebration of environmental progress.

"Environomental justice" is just another gayop propaganda word for "using environmental funding and arguments to move money to Democrats' minority grifter NGOs."

Maintenance expenses included everything from artifact storage and landscaping to security and audiovisual upkeep.

Artifacts?

Like halogen-filled display cases showing EPA regulations?

Pro-Tip: If nothing in your museum is worth Nick Cage's time to steal it, it's not a real museum.

According to Fox News, "a breakdown of estimated annual costs to operate the museum, which was provided to Fox Digital, shows taxpayers were expected to foot the bill for an estimated: $123,766.29 in annual cleaning and landscaping costs, $37,899 for audio and visual maintenance, $54,292.99 in annual 'artifact storage' costs, $8,900 for 'Magnetometer maintenance,' $46,000 for X-ray maintenance, an estimated $123,000 in utility costs, and $207,326 in annual costs to fund two security guards for the museum during operating hours. The total annual operating costs totaled just more than $600,000."

X-ray machines and magnetometers are expensive security apparatuses. So they're spending millions to protect a fake museum from all its literal ones of visitors.

More spending on "artifact storage." Now, I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but I just googled it and it turns out that the $52,292.99 spent on "artifact storage" just happens to be what it costs for a large incubator for Reptilian Eggs.

Coincidence?

Serious, and possibly controversial question:

Remember when we all thought Obama was the worst president ever?

Has Biden eclipsed him?

THE MORNING RANT: Buck Shots – 4/04/2025

—Buck Throckmorton

My apologies, but personal obligations prevented time for much content today. But here are a few quick shots:

There are some conservative legal minds I follow on Twitter, whom I greatly admire, and I am very impressed at their efforts to document all the legal machinations going on with the rogue federal judges and their extra-constitutional interference in the Executive Branch. Unfortunately, documenting this nonsense is like trying to be the scorekeeper in a game of Calvinball. The Trump administration is trying to play by judicial rules that are constantly in flux, and outside the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

I assume the day is coming when Donald Trump will let John Roberts know that the Chief Justice had a chance to sit on that zoo judiciary of his, but now it’s too late, and those rogue judges will just be ignored going forward.

In fact, President Biden already set the precedent that the President can boldly ignore judicial rulings, including from the Supreme Court itself. In Biden’s own words, “The Supreme Court blocked me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me.” Democrats, the media, and the Washington establishment were uniformly ecstatic at Biden for ignoring the Supreme Court.

Thanks to Joe Biden, President Trump has the green light to ignore not only the rogue federal judges, but also SCOTUS itself, and no one has any standing to complain. They didn’t think the new rules would ever come back to haunt them.

Did any of you see this story out of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel? “Wisconsin Trump voter, whose wife was detained by ICE, says he doesn't regret his vote”

It reminds me of this gag:

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Dans un café
Edgar Degas

The Morning Report — 4/ 4 /25

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. And so the big story this morning are the reactions to and predictions about President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff regime. While I am certainly no economics expert, I certainly know enough to recognize what the offshoring of quite a large chunk of our manufacturing sector overseas has done to our economy and society in general going back now to the 1960s. The regulatory and bureaucratic factors as well as big labor unions were certainly factors that led to industry seeking cheap sources of labor as well as cheaper overhead by moving overseas.

Yes the usual suspects in the propaganda press, the Dems and globalists and/or Trump averse Rinos on our own side of the aisle are raising a huge stink about it.

Somone I have followed and respected for a very long time is the brilliant economist and commentator Thomas Sowell, who has some interesting, to say the least, observations about how we got here and what Trump is attempting.

Economist Thomas Sowell suggested that President Donald Trump may be taking a “ruinous” approach to tariffs and international trade. Sowell commented on Trump’s trade policies during an interview on April 1, a day before Trump enacted sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries. The “Liberation Day” announcement, as the White House billed it, put in place a system of “reciprocity” on international trade where foreign countries are tariffed in accordance with the trade barriers they impose on the United States.

“It’s painful to see what a ruinous decision, from back in the 1920s, being repeated,” the 94-year-old Sowell said on an episode of “Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.” “Now, insofar as he’s using these tariffs to get various strategic things settled and that he is satisfied with that.”

. . . “If this is just a set of short-run ploys for various limited objectives limited in time. Fine, maybe,” Sowell granted. “But, if this is gonna be the policy for four long years, that you’re gonna try this, you’re gonna try that, you’re gonna try something else. A lot of people are gonna wait.” Sowell noted the recent dips in the stock market that have followed many of Trump’s announcements on tariffs and said that “people are holding on to their money before they do anything because they don’t know where this is gonna lead.”

As I alluded, when Thomas Sowell speaks, people who know and respect his great intellect, listen attentively. Sowell makes reference to FDR and how his mistakes which exacerbated the '29 crash are being repeated by Trump. Yeah, everyone and their uncle are now screaming "Smoot Hawley" but the '29 crash became the Depression primarily because of the failure of the New Deal. Which, in a way DOGE is attempting to address.

And if we're going to take a look at history and tariffs:

“[W]e built a sustainable economy, we did this thing, starting with Alexander Hamilton, where we said it’s really going to matter that we make things in the United States. … Yeah, we’re going to import stuff, we [were] never not going to buy stuff from abroad, but we were going to make sure that the internal American economy was healthy, could produce a lot, provided jobs…not just for people with graduate degrees, not just for somebody who is going to work on Wall Street, but for people with less education…so that means you need an industrial base. We built that economy…behind a very high tariff wall…it built America into an economic powerhouse.”

People seem to not know or have forgotten that nations to this day protect their workers and their economies via tariffs. Also, 200 years ago there was no Federal government and bureaucracy nor a Federal reserve to screw around with our economy and interfere with the way people do business. But of course it took almost 200 years to build that economic powerhouse as well as the concomitant attitude of the people via the American work ethic, and the freedom to pursue one's dreams as well as to fail repeatedly before succeeding.

And regardless of Liberation Day, we're not going to suddenly become the great industrial powerhouse we once were overnight. It's going to take time. Sadly the one key element that is missing is anything even resembling a scintilla of national unity that we had at the time of Pearl Harbor that allowed American industry to kick into overdrive and finally get us out of the Great Depression that the New Deal created.

Now, is Trump correct in his assessment of the fundamental trade unfairness/imbalance that has been hammering us for decades? Absolutely. While the propagandists are shrieking about the Dow Jones tumbling, remember this creates an opportunity for investors to pick up stocks at bargain prices, if they are willing to hold onto them for the long term.

Moving beyond tariffs, here's an oldie but a goodie, how about significantly lowering taxes or exempting taxes altogether for an extended period of time in the interest of enticing manufacturers to either build new factories and re-shore jobs and manufacturing back to the States? That and cut the regulatory regime of the federal bureaucracy so investors and enterprises can compete and, here's a radical idea, actually make a profit.

Finally, here's a positive take:

Critics claim President Trump’s reciprocal—‘kind’—tariffs will destroy jobs. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, President Trump’s tariffs have the potential to create 15 million new jobs. Many of these jobs will be high-paying manufacturing jobs, jobs with employee benefits—the very sort of jobs that were lost over the last 50 years to offshoring and the “race to the bottom.” How?

Reciprocal tariffs are an olive branch. If foreign countries come to the table and lower their own tariffs, then Americans will benefit from freer—and most importantly, fair—trade. This will open up new markets potentially worth trillions of dollars to American businesses.

If not, then tariffs will level the playing field and protect American workers from foreign labor—who often work in slave-like conditions for next to nothing. This will reshore America’s factories, creating millions of jobs in the process. . .

. . . To begin with, we need to remember that America is not an economy. We are a nation bounded by blood and tradition. The Constitution does not give anyone a right to buy “cheap goods” from China or Bangladesh. The President is obligated to do what is in America’s best interests—even if this prevents liberals from buying imported European cars.

In 2024, America exported $3.19 trillion worth of goods and services. This is in spite of the fact that most of our trade partners impose massive tariffs—as well as other non-monetary barriers to entry such as Byzantine regulations—on American goods. This goes to show just how efficient and competitive America’s industries are. Nevertheless, the playing field is not level.

Let us assume that trading partners see the error of their ways and reduce their tariffs to reciprocal levels. This will allow American businesses to compete on even terms and will open foreign markets for American businesses like never before. If we assume that a 1% reduction in net tariffs results in a 1% increase in trade—which is a reasonable assumption based on current economic models—then America’s exports would increase by $1.6 trillion, bringing total exports up to $4.8 trillion.

Increasing America’s exports would create millions of good-paying jobs. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that every billion of GDP supports between 5,000 and 5,500 jobs. Based on this, these increased exports would support some 8.4 million new jobs. If we assume that only half of our trade partners play ball, we are still looking at over 4 million new jobs.

Elsewhere on the economic front, there is actual broad support for what Trump is trying to do, some of it bipartisan in nature, and unemployment filings plunged in March signaling a robust labor market, this with the full knowledge that Liberation Day was on the horizon. So, we shall certainly see.

And perhaps if we had not granted the Chi-Coms most-favored nation trading status, the economic and geopolitical landscape today might be much less dangerous.Just a thought.

And do give a listen to our latest podcast linked here and in the sidebar, where two outstanding guests, and friends, culture journalist Christian Toto and the estimable Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute join CBD for a great conversation about what the absolute disaster of the Snow White remake means in terns of a sea change in both Hollywood and what its rejection means in broader terms for the culture at large.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. 

Have a great weekend.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Hotel Washington was also evacuated.
  Treasury Building Evacuates After Suspicious Package Found Near White House
  
• "You're awash in blood and dirty money, and I hope that you are accountable for that one day."
  Hawley Unloads On Code Pink Activists: ‘You’re Awash in Blood And Dirty Money’

Daily Tech News 4 April 2025

—Pixy Misa

• Oracle got hacked, twice, recently, according to Oracle staff who won't go on the record and are now in fact in hiding in an undisclosed location. (Yahoo)
  
  Or something.

  Oracle staff informed some clients this week that the attacker gained access to usernames, passkeys and encrypted passwords, according to the people, who spoke on condition that they not be identified because they're not authorized to discuss the matter.

  Note that this is the same company that very recently proclaimed:

  There has been no breach of Oracle Cloud. The published credentials are not for the Oracle Cloud. No Oracle Cloud customers experienced a breach or lost any data.

  Basically, the data that was stolen in the breach that Oracle so strenuously denied ever happened is real, but old, and likely useless.

We Started A Game We Didn't Finish. ONT, Remember?

—WeirdDave

Howdy Horde! Thursday night, almost to the weekend, how is everybody?

On Islam

? [1/9] I recently had a passionate debate with a German friend about whether Islam lies at the root of the dysfunction in Islamic societies and whether it can be reformed. Like many of my privileged Western liberal friends, his understanding of the Islamic world seems to rest… pic.twitter.com/19I1WEWfPv

— Maral Salmassi (@MaralSalmassi) March 24, 2025

It's worth clicking through to X and reading the whole thread. Do you agree with her conclusions?

Headline Of The Week

Pregnant woman forced to swallow lit ‘blunt’ after being dragged out of bed by man who wanted to wash her feet, cops say

The story is just run of the mill domestic violence, but that headline...boy howdy.

Squish

Amy Coney Barrett Could Be A Superb Supreme Court Justice. She’s Choosing Not To Be

Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett has become a sort of enigma among avid Supreme Court observers.

After filling the vacancy left by deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020, many conservatives were hopeful that the former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia would offer a much-needed dose of originalism to the high court’s majority of Republican appointees. With Barrett joining Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and (on his good days) Neil Gorsuch, the prospects for decisions abiding by the Constitution as written would be far more likely, or so the conventional thinking went.

To her credit, Barrett has shown the potential do just that. During her time as a justice, the former Notre Dame law professor has been instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade and Chevron deference, upholding certain religious liberty protections, and several other high-profile matters that have come before the high court in recent years.

However, what continues to stump constitutionalists and Barrett hopefuls alike is the associate justice’s abject failure to consistently apply originalist doctrine in her rulings.

She's a squish, nothing but.

America The Beautiful

Non-Americans Are Sharing The Things They Actually Like About America, And It's Eye-Opening

This person's probably from South Africa:

Safety in rural areas. Our dream is to buy a farm and live peacefully, but where I live, it's so dangerous it's unreal. When I see movies or programs about people living on ranches or farms in some town in the US, it looks amazing. We could never.

And of course, they didn't forget the important stuff:

My country never would have thought of replacing the bread in a KFC chicken sandwich with TWO PIECES OF CHICKEN. Genius. Keep 'em coming.

USA! USA! USA!

Say Dave, How Drunk Have You Seen People Get On The ONT?

Me:

pic.twitter.com/jmhjSmmLU1

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf) April 4, 2025

The Sorry State Of “Higher” Education

https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/the-average-college-student-today

Students are not absolutely illiterate in the sense of being unable to sound out any words whatsoever. Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done. They’re like me clicking through a mandatory online HR training. Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn't even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided.

They also lie about it. I wrote the textbook for a course I regularly teach. It’s a fairly popular textbook, so I’m assuming it is not terribly written. I did everything I could to make the writing lively and packed with my most engaging examples. The majority of students don’t read it. Oh, they will come to my office hours (occasionally) because they are bombing the course, and tell me that they have been doing the reading, but it’s obvious they are lying. The most charitable interpretation is that they looked at some of the words, didn’t understand anything, pretended that counted as reading, and returned to looking at TikTok.

Has anyone seen any of those social media posts displaying things like eight grade exams from 100 years ago? Inevitably, the questions are more detailed and harder than many people get in college today. Here's an example.

Archeology

Archaeologists find first evidence of epic biblical battle at ‘Armageddon’

For the first time, a team of Israeli archaeologists has uncovered ancient artifacts at northern Israel’s “Armageddon” site that might offer proof of an epic battle documented in the books of Kings II and Chronicles between a king of Judah and an Egyptian pharaoh.

Two academic papers published earlier this year explained how an unprecedented amount of 7th-century BCE Egyptian pottery was found in recent excavations at Megiddo, suggesting that Egyptian soldiers were indeed in the right biblical place at what could be the right biblical period.

“Megiddo is the only site in Israel and the neighboring countries mentioned in the Bible and in all great records of the Ancient Near East,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein, head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa and long-time director of the Megiddo Expedition.

Weird how they keep finding 10,000 year old artifacts in Israel from the people who “colonized” the poor Palestinians. Very strange.

Perfect Your Racism!

Actually, this is a fun little website. It shows you two pictures, a male and a female, typical of different ethnic groups from around the world. You have to click on the map where you think they're from, and then it tells you how far off you were.

EthnoGuesser

My average score was 1274, although I nailed Eastern European group dead on.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Shoes:

Sauce

Close it up

Ladyhawk Cafe

—Ace

Val de Courre, France
by Soule Sebastien/@Valgone_photo

Rescuing a tiny skinny kitten sheltering under a truck in the rain.

Peek-a-boo.

My weekend plans.

Cat and dog are amazed by visiting turtle.

Puppy head-tilts.

My Bodyguard.

Possibly worse than letting a fox guard the henhouse.

Kitten and fawn cuddle.

Wolf pup howls.

Mama koala helping her baby down the tree.

Dog teaches tiny puppy how to play with a ball.

Donkey nosing a rabbit.

Sometimes a link has only a single intended viewer: All true penguins are extinct. What are called "penguins" now are frauds, imposters, and grifters.

Here, a "penguin" swindles another gullible human.

So-called "penguins" are often notorious criminals.

Google's terrible AI describes the smell of the durian fruit this way:

The durian fruit is notorious for its pungent, often described as "stinky" smell, which has led to its ban in public places in some areas, though many find the taste delicious.

Here's a more detailed look at the durian smell:

Descriptive comparisons:
The smell has been likened to a mix of rotten onions, turpentine, raw sewage, gym socks, stale vomit, skunk spray, and even pig excrement.

Here's a Dramatic Husky reacting to the smell of the durian fruit.

Trump's Department of Education Orders Schools to Certify That All DEI Programs Are Defunded, As a Precondition of Receiving Any Future Federal Funding

—Ace

The big question is: will lying on these forms be prosecuted as felony fraud on the US government?

Because all of the leftwing school administrators are already lying, renaming DEI officers as just "Officers" while keeping them on the payroll (yes, the Air Force did that).

As a condition for receiving federal money, the Trump administration is ordering K-12 schools to certify that they are following federal civil rights laws and ending any discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

A notice sent Thursday by the Education Department gives states and schools 10 days to sign and return the certification. It's the latest escalation against DEI policies, apparently giving the Republican administration a new lever for terminating federal money.

"Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right," Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. He said many schools have flouted their legal obligations, "including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another."

The certification asks state and school leaders to sign a "reminder of legal obligations" acknowledging their federal money is conditioned on compliance with federal civil rights laws. It also demands compliance with several pages of legal analysis written by the administration.

"The use of certain DEI practices can violate federal law," the administration wrote in the certification, adding that it is illegal for programs to advantage one race over another.

Schools and states that use illegal DEI practices can face a loss of federal money, including grants and contracts, and can be held liable under the False Claims Act, according to the certification. It specifically threatens Title I funding, which sends billions of dollars a year to America's schools and targets low-income areas.

That hints that maybe prosecution is in the offing for those who fraudulently sign the certifications while keeping renamed DEI policies and departments in place.

...

It follows a Feb. 14 memo declaring that any school policy that treats students or staff differently because of their race is illegal. It aimed to fight what the memo described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white and Asian American students.

It wouldn't be an AP "news" article without now giving the left, and only the left, the chance to attack the policy, with zero comment from anyone supporting the position that Racism Is Bad.

The certification letter drew blowback from critics who said it conflicts with Trump's promise to return education to schools and states.

"Is this what the Trump administration calls local control? You can't say you're giving control back to states and then dictate how they run their schools," said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union.

And of course it wouldn't be an AP "News" article without giving Randi "Shutdown" Weingarten the last word, to let everyone know what they're supposed to think:

The union's president called the certification requirement illegal, saying federal law prohibits the White House from telling schools and colleges what to teach, and that federal money cannot be withheld without due process.

"He's wielding a cudgel of billions in federal aid to tens of millions of children, of all races and ethnicities, to force educators to kowtow to his politics and ideology," said Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT.

I need this rancid bitch in jail.

Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up...

A Female Fencer is Banned from Competing When She Refuses to Fight a Man

—Ace

If there's no difference between men and women, then there should be no "women's" sports, period. If there's no difference between men and women, women should just compete with men, period, and if they can't compete -- which they can't -- then they don't get to play sports.

This system where we spend a lot of taxpayer money to subsidize "women's" sports but then allow random dudes to crybaby their way in has got to go.

A female fencer is speaking out after she was disqualified from a tournament in Maryland for taking a knee and refusing to compete against a transgender-identifying male opponent.

Stephanie Turner, 31, was black-carded and booted from a tournament this past weekend for refusing to compete against Redmond Sullivan, who is male and identifies as transgender. Sullivan formerly competed against males and was permitted by USA Fencing to compete in the women's tournament, the organization confirmed to The Daily Wire.

"I want to thank God for trusting me with this mission to fight for female exclusive sports and putting me in a place to effectively protest," Turner told The Daily Wire in a statement.

"I also want to add that I am grateful to the Independent Council on Women's Sports (ICONS) for their encouragement and support," she added. "They have helped me and so many other women who have been put in this unfair and confusing situation."

...

The transgender did what transgenders usually do when women refuse to support their delusions: He told her that he had the backing of a liberal member of the board of directors and threatened to use his power to squash her.

"Redmond says to me, 'Well you know, there is a member on the board of directors here who supports me, and there is a policy that acknowledges me as a woman, so I am allowed to fence, and you will get black-carded,' and I said, 'I know.'"

Sometimes backlash is unfortunate.

It's not in this case. The backlash is well-earned and justified.

Chubby Theater Kid Spazz, The Fiercely Heterosexual Corey Booker (TM), Carries On Shouting and Stamping His Feet for 20+ Hours and Lefties Think He Really Did Something

—Ace

The constantly attention-seeking, beard-"dating" Senator Spartacus did a talking filibuster for some reason, shouting -- get this -- Orange Man Bad and also -- get this -- turning on the fake tears to show how much Passion and Fight he has.

Most people who saw clips of this had the same thought: "Vin Diesel is really porking out. And he's a lot gayer than he seems in the Fast and Furious movies."

Lefties are calling this obvious low-effort stunt to position himself for another failed run in 2028 heroic and inspiring.

I swear to God, it's so condescending to praise black people so extravagantly for dumb stunts like this. White liberals are always screaming their genuine beliefs about black people by gushing about how amazing it is that they can do relatively easy things.

Thus far, it has been a gloomy 2025 for the late night comedy shows as they have attacked Democrats from the left for not doing anything to stop Republicans, but on Wednesday, a trio of them claimed to have reason for optimism as they reacted to Sen. Cory Booker's 25-hour talk. Some suggested he get an award, while others claimed he spoke for all of America, while others tried their hand at media criticism, arguing the media hasn't praised Booker enough.

CBS's Stephen Colbert teed up a clip on The Late Show of the final moments of Booker's speech where he compared himself to the Civil Rights Movement, "There were many great moments, but Booker saved, I think, the best for last."

After the clip and audience cheers, Colbert declared he was such a fan that he invited Booker on the show, "Yes, sir. That was beautiful. Give that man an award, eventually. First give him a toilet and a bed and a cauliflower steak or whatever he calls food. And I'm happy to say Cory Booker will be my guest on Monday right over there to talk about what is going on in the Senate, what is going on in America, and what can be done."

Over at NBC and Late Night, host Seth Meyers welcomed MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and recalled, "Cory Booker, last night, did speak for 25 hours and then went straight on your show before declaring, "I did think, you know, as for what it accomplishes, I don't know, but it did, at least, say, I think, to, you know, his voters 'Look, I do still have some energy for this fight.'"

Well, that certainly is a high compliment. "I don't know what he did but I guess he did something!"

[Maddow] claimed, "Senator Booker said his constituents told him, 'Take risks, do something you don't think you can do, you need to show people that this not normal times and it is worth doing everything we can' and he did."

"Everything we can do" = blabbing in an air conditioned room for twenty hours

Noted Couch-Surfing Liberal Agent Frank Luntz was just tickled pink in his heiney-hole.

Frank Luntz: Booker marathon speech 'may have changed the course of political history'

I mean...

Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) "may have changed the course of political history" with his marathon speech breaking the Senate's record for the longest floor speech in its history.

"I want to emphasize what Cory Booker did over the last 24 hours may have changed the course of political history. I watched a lot of it. I listened to words.  I listened to phrases," Luntz said during a Tuesday evening appearance on NewsNation's "On Balance."

Wow. Corey Booker talked for a long time, which changed the course of history, and Frank Luntz did his part, too! "I listened to words. I listened to phrases."

Frank Luntz is doing Everything He Can to Fight Fascism, too!

He confirmed that Booker's unprecedented feat "struck a tone" with Americans in the midst of the Trump administration's controversial policies.

"He struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country too," Luntz told anchor Leland Vittert.

...

"That speech puts Cory Booker as one of the leaders for the Democratic Party for 2028," Luntz said.

Yup, he just has to find another LGBQT+ supporting woman to pose as his girlfriend and he's all set.

Violent Leftwing Professor -- the Chair of the English Department -- Suspended After Flipping Table Where Republicans Were Peacefully Providing Voter Information

—Ace

Don't worry, it's just some paid time off. He'll be back in class in a week or two, because the left insists that its fellow leftists have the right to attack the right without consequence.

People don't resort to "self-help" -- using violence to vindicate their rights -- because we trust, or used to trust, supposedly objective and fair institutions to vindicate our rights for us.

If that system is no longer in place -- and it's obviously not -- we will have to revert to older, more primitive, more violent methods.

Is that what the left wants? The left with their 350-pound shemales and spaghetti-armed theater kid "bullies"?

We'll see. We'll see.

Wisconsin university professor placed on leave after allegedly flipping College Republicans' table

University department chair on leave after allegedly flipping College Republicans' table

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire English Department chair has been placed on leave pending an investigation into allegations that he flipped the College Republicans' table. Video: UW-Eau Claire College Republicans

The chair of the English Department at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire has been placed on administrative leave after allegedly flipping the College Republicans' table on campus Tuesday morning.

UW-Eau Claire Interim Provost Michael Carney confirmed the incident with Fox News.

"I am deeply concerned that our students' peaceful effort to share information on campus on election day was disrupted," Carney said in a statement. "UW-Eau Claire strongly supports every person's right to free speech and free expression, and the university remains committed to ensuring that campus is a place where a wide variety of opinions and beliefs can be shared and celebrated."

He added that "civil dialogue is a critical part of the university experience, and peaceful engagement is fundamental to learning itself."

Whatever we do, we have to continue spending trillions to fund public schools and our state-of-the-art university system.

The average college student is "functionally illiterate," writes "Hilarius Bookbinder," who teaches philosophy at a public university that attracts students with mid-range academic records.

Most students "could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read," nor do they have "the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read and most certainly not the attention span to finish," writes Bookbinder. They don't read textbooks or primary texts, "even in upper-divisions courses that students supposedly take out of genuine interest."

Students write at the eighth-grade level, he writes. They submit the cheapest cliché as novel insight.

Exam question: Describe the attitude of Dostoevsky's Underground Man towards acting in one's own self-interest, and how this is connected to his concerns about free will. Are his views self-contradictory?

Student: With the UGM its all about our journey in life, not the destination. He beleives we need to take time to enjoy the little things becuase life is short and you never gonna know what happens. Sometimes he contradicts himself cause sometimes you say one thing but then you think something else later. It's all relative.

The alternative is a coherent answer written by a bot.

The average student goes to college to qualify for a middle-class job, he writes. That's not new. But, these days, professors are seeing "a stunning level of disconnection."

Students are much more likely to skip days or weeks of class without explanation, the professor writes. If they show up, they walk out in the middle of a 50-minute class to look at their phones, to which they are addicted. Or they pretend to type notes on laptops while looking at social media. Or gambling.

Students expect faculty to do the work for them, he writes. "No, you can't have my slides. Get the notes from a classmate. Read the book. Come to office hours for a conversation if you are still confused after the preceding steps. . . .Try coming to class."

Students miss quizzes, then can't be bothered to show up for a make-up or talk to the professor about it.

The professor says that he'd like to fail most of his students -- but the administration would crucify him, because if you kicked out all of the illiterate phone-addicted dum-dums, there would not be enough money coming in to keep the university solvent.

DOGE Discovers That the VA Was Paying $350,000-$380,000 Per Month For Minor Tweaks to Its Website

—Ace

This was almost certainly a payoff. I don't know many website managers who charge $350,000-$380,000 per month to give the hamsters a kick.

The contract has now been cancelled.

DOGE finds Veterans Affairs paying $350K per month for website modifications

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the leadership of Elon Musk, revealed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had been spending an astounding $350,000--$380,000 per month on minor website updates before canceling the bloated contract.

Key Details:

The VA paid a contractor nearly $380,000/month for minor website modifications.

DOGE confirmed the contract was not renewed; the work is now done by one internal staffer in 10 hours/week.

The revelation follows DOGE's termination of 113 federal contracts worth $4.7 billion in total.

Diving Deeper:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the agency created by executive order on President Donald Trump's first day in office, has uncovered yet another striking example of wasteful federal spending. This time, the target is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which until recently had been paying nearly $380,000 a month for relatively simple website modifications--work that a single staffer now handles internally with just 10 hours of effort each week.

DOGE broke the story via a post on X, formerly Twitter, praising the VA for not renewing the contract. "VA was previously paying ~$380,000/month for minor website modifications," the agency wrote. "That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week."

In sad news, Musk will be stepping back from his role as head of DOGE soon.

The left is celebrating that their literal domestic terrorism campaign against Musk has worked, but Musk and the Administration say he was always expected to step away from the job after 130 days, which is the term he was appointed to.

I don't know -- maybe he'd have sought an extension if not for the terrorism. I'm not sure if the terrorism worked or not.

The left sure is happy that their terrorism may have worked. Note that for your records.

Did you hear? A temporary government employee whose legally limited term of employment is 130 days is going to leave government employment after 140 days?!

Shocking, I know. Somebody in the government is going to obey the law, which explains why the news media is printing screaming headlines that Elon Musk is leaving government employment.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk loudly proclaimed when Elon Musk was hired that he would be in his position for 130 days. Given how things work in recent years, it is shocking that somebody in the government is obeying the law. That almost never happened under Obama and Joe Biden.

Yesterday, X was filled with celebration that Elon Musk had been pressured out of the government by all the attacks on Tesla. It was all started by a POLITICO "scoop" that the Trump administration had had enough. Trump liked him, but his cabinet did not.

...

Every single of word of that "scoop" was a total invention. It was a Narrative(TM), and everybody in the media picked it up, amplified it, and created a story that was essentially a hoax as invented as the "fine people" hoax.

POLITICO didn't make a mistake. The invented--or rather spread an invented hoax for somebody who cooked it up--because the left needs to create the sense that their coordinated opposition is working. Trump is losing momentum, his cabinet is revolting, and Musk has become a liability. It is part of their plan to cripple Trump by crippling Musk.

The left is doing what it always does when it's defending their zealous religious-cultist devotion to an unpopular position -- they're lying. They're claiming that they all really, really, rilly want to cut government spending too, they just don't like the exact way it's currently being done. But if it was done in the "right way," of course they'd support cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget, Silly-Head!

And when you ask them for a list of cuts they support, they go silent. Though they might say "We need to stop giving away tax bonanzas to billionaires," which isn't a cut in spending but an increase in taxes. (Which they count as "a cut in spending," because they claim the government is writing checks to the rich.)

Of course their main lie has been "We support cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse, because of course we do, but we don't like that this billionaire Elon Musk is doing it, looking at IRS transactions so that this near-trillionaire, literally the richest man who has ever lived on earth for all of history, can jot down Granny's bank routing information so that he can nab her sweet $1,300/month Social Security payments.

And also, they don't like that "no one elected Musk," which is true of every single Administration official in every single Administration, except it's less true of Musk, who appeared at Trump campaign rallies with Trump promising that if we elected him he'd appoint Musk as head of DOGE.

My point is this: The left is going to have to quickly change its lies post-Musk to claim some other objection to the exact way government spending is being cut, and who it's being cut by.

But don't worry -- the truth-seeking media will call them out for changing their story about why they oppose these particular cuts. The media will not let the Democrat Party get away with its usual lies, don't you worry one second Buddy!

Joe Scarborough: I Was Such a Rock-Ribbed Super-Conservative That the Republican Party's Liberal Leadership Repeatedly Threatened Me, But I Am Too Courageous and Tough to be Frightened

—Ace

Oh.

Is that how you see yourself?

That's interesting. Psychiatrically, I mean.

Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein:

NewsBusters readers know that Joe Scarborough has the braggadocious habit of mentioning his former congressman status at every possible opportunity. They're also aware that Scarborough, whom we've dubbed Muy Macho Joe, likes to brag about what a tough a hombre he is.

Scarborough earned that moniker back in 2023 by bragging that if he ever saw a Capitol tourist snapping a photo somewhere Joe didn't like, he'd say: "Put the camera down or I'm gonna make you eat it. I would slap the camera out of his hand." Dirty Harry was a wimp in comparison.

On Wednesday's Morning Joe, Scarborough seized as a two-fer on the result in yesterday's judicial election in Wisconsin, in which the Democrat won despite Elon Musk campaigning in the state and donating heavily to the Republican candidate.

Scarborough not only dragged his former congressman status into the conversation, he also bragged about how tough he was when Republican leaders threatened to campaign against him when he took votes they didn't like.

As Scarborough described his display of extreme machismo. There's only one major problem. Does anyone actually remember the national GOP establishment opposing Scarborough in the 1994 primary, when he ran as a rock-ribbed conservative?

I had the Republicans doing everything they could to beat me in 1994. And I won.

And so, I get up there, and I start voting in ways they don't want me to vote, and they threaten me. And at one point, I had a member of leadership say, if you, you know, if you don't go this way, Scarborough, we're going to, and I cut him off.

I go, what, come into my district? Please come into my district. I won by 62% the first time you did. Come in again, and I'll win by 75%, and I turned around and walked off.

Video at the link.

Greg Gutfeld lauds Joe Scarborough for his "honesty" as well as his "dime-slot Hillbilly eyes," as Scarborough claims that he first became aware of Biden's mental infirmity during the "shocking" debate.

Open Thread

—Ace

Here's Karoline Leavitt lighting up the media for insisting that rapists and child-killers have a permanent right to live in America because they touched American soil.

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

—CBD

The late and decidedly unlamented five year or 10 year or 20 year environmental plan of the Biden administration to transform America's evil addiction to fossil fuels into a beautiful garden of unicorns and pixies and lovely and abundant clean energy ran into two problems: Reality, and Donald Trump.

Reality came in the form of physics and economics; fossil fuels are incredibly energy dense, easily transported, the industry is amazingly efficient, and the fuel is cheap! Contrast that with the mess that is the current state of battery technology, the high cost of heating with electricity, the inability to transport that energy to its intended users, the pathetic range of EVs, and the awful environmental impact of just about everything involved with this massive worldwide boondoggle, and it's an easy decision.

Of course, our highly educated and profoundly stupid elites made the wrong decision, and that's where we needed Donald Trump. Physics and economics would have eventually saved the day, but not before countless billions more dollars were wasted on unproven or simply impossible technology, and with that the destruction of our superb energy production and distribution systems.

Within days of his inauguration, Donald Trump made it abundantly clear that the future of energy in America was not some pie-in-the-sky nonsense about solar/wind/tidal generation that can never supply the demands of our current economy, much less the hopefully growing economy of the future. The only way to do that is to decrease significantly total demand while increasing cost, and that is an economy and society-killing plan.

Sort of like Western Europe!

The Heartland Is Tearing Off Biden's Green Energy Shackles

A green company’s years-long effort to use the power of eminent domain to seize farmland in the Plains States was derailed after Republican South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden signed legislation on March 13 barring the condemnation of private property for the construction of a CO2 pipeline.

Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions’ $4.5 billion, 2,100-mile climate project envisaged pumping 12 million tons of carbon dioxide captured annually at Midwestern ethanol plants across five states – Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota – via a highly-pressurized pipeline before burying it deep underground in North Dakota.

Dubbed the “CO2 pipeline,” the project is part of a larger carbon capture and storage scheme, a taxpayer-subsidized investment fad touted to help heavy industries reach the Biden administration’s goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) supported the technology by offering participating companies a tax credit of up to $85 per ton of CO2 emissions captured and stored.

But the top-down diktats of the federal leviathan are a thing of the past. And those hugely expensive tax credits and graft-filled green energy grants are going away as well. If green energy is actually possible for a 1st World economy, then it must pass economic muster, and that means it must compete on the same level as every other energy source. And if that means that EVs are a thing of the past, or a plaything for the wealthy, then so be it. We have no responsibility for the financial success of any product, much less ones that would not exist were it not for massive government subsidies (read: a big tax on us).

It's time to return to market pressures as the primary measure of success. If Tesla fails...oh well! And if Tesla or any other green energy company succeeds on the merits? Fantastic! We will all have more choice!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter] And the Apple and Spotify feeds for CJN's podcast should be working!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Twilight in the Cedars at Darien, Connecticut
John Frederick Kensett