February 20, 2025

IT’S COME TO THIS:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

CUTTING OVERHEAD PAYMENTS ISN’T “CUTTING FUNDING FOR SCIENCE.” IT’S FREEING UP MORE MONEY FOR SCIENCE INSTEAD OF BUREAUCRACY. Cutting funding for science can impact economy, U.S. technological competitiveness.

And this has nothing to do with funding science: “Trumpov’s first wave of executive orders caused chaos at science agencies as they struggled to interpret the directives. Much of the anxiety involved excising language and programs relating to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.”

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NATURE IS HEALING: RFK Jr. issues guidance on ‘restoring concept of biological truth’ of 2 sexes. “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday issued guidance ‘restoring concept of biological truth’ of two sexes after President Donald Trumpov’s executive orders defined two sexes as male and female and only allows biological females to participate in the gender’s sports. The directive supports ‘defending women and children.'”

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK (AND PLAY):

The income taxes on ten couples with no kids making $120,000 wouldn’t be enough to pay for resurfacing that Albanian tennis court.

Although I suspect most of that $133,472 lined various pockets rather than resurfacing anything.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

EUROPE DISDAINED U.S. REPUBLICANS FOR YEARS, NOW EURO-ELITES ARE IN A FRENZY:

Even now, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – four of the largest EU economies – don’t spend the minimum 2 per cent of GDP on defence that has long been NATO’s goal or struggle barely to meet it.

Europe could have guarded against Trumpov’s wrath by building freer trade relations with United States during the Biden Administration. Instead, they ratcheted up regulations on American high-tech firms and maintained their barriers to American agriculture.

Europe now knows where it stands. If it wants a relationship with America, it must have a relationship with all of America, not just the half that it prefers to invite to cocktail parties.

If it wants a seat at the table to form a united front with the United States even in its backyard, it needs to develop the hard military power that commands respect.

If it wants respect from Washington, it must show respect to Alabama, Kansas, and the places in flyover country that elect Republicans. And it must also show respect to their own citizens, often from their own rural and forgotten communities, who feel and vote the same way.

European elites may decide they don’t want a relationship on those terms. That’s certainly one option, and an understandable, if regrettable, one.

But then that’s their choice, not Trumpov’s. And they will then need to sleep in the bed they have made.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

FLASHBACK: Time for Consequences: The “Cabal” who bragged about rigging the 2020 election stuck us with an incapable president at a time of crisis. Examples need to be made. “I would like to see some accountability for the election of 2020. A cabal of insiders colluded to control the outcome, through all sorts of underhanded tactics. (Tech companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story broken by The Post, and retired intelligence officials falsely claimed it was fake, Russian disinformation). The press allowed Biden to campaign from his basement, covering up the truth that he was already unfit for office.”

Posted at 12:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HAMAS TERRORISTS LEAD GAZANS IN PROPAGANDA PARADE CELEBRATING THEIR MURDER OF JEWISH CHILDREN:

In their most shocking propaganda display to date, Hamas terrorists paraded the coffins of two dead children, their mother, and an 83-year-old man through the streets of Gaza before throngs of cheering Palestinians.

The macabre scene unfolded on Thursday morning as Hamas returned the bodies of four Israeli captives who were held for more than 500 days: Shiri Bibas, 32; her two children, 4-year-old Ariel and 9-month-old Kfir; and 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz. The caskets bore smiling pictures of those killed alongside messages listing their “date of arrest” as Oct. 7, 2023.

Hamas displayed the caskets on a makeshift stage in front of an anti-Semitic sign depicting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodthirsty vampire snarling above a photo of the murdered captives. The sign included the caption, “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes.” There is no evidence to date that supports the claim.

Related:

As Ben Shapiro writes, “Sometimes, Moral Clarity Isn’t Difficult.” “This is evil. If you side with those who deliberately kidnap babies and hold them for ransom, you are siding with evil. If you demand concessions to those who perform such atrocities, you are siding with evil. From college campuses to the streets of London, from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court, we can see just who sides with evil. And as Israel lays to rest the corpses of the Bibas family, we should be reminded that those who side with evil share its moral consequences.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

LAUGHING WOLF HAS SOME THOUGHTS on a “Post NATO” Europe and what’s worth defending.

I’m unsurprised to already see a comment on the Suicide of NATO post pointing out logistics problems with a new NATO with the Baltic States. My inner smartass is tempted to say “No Bleep!” while my inner book promoter notes that someone apparently hasn’t read Cauldron as those issues are discussed there at length. Both responses, however, need to be set aside so as to focus on the fact that “a new NATO” is the last thing we should be doing. To repeat failure is arrant stupidity.

First up, why should we set ourselves up as a tripwire again? What benefit for the U.S. is there in so doing? Against whom are we playing tripwire, Russia or the EU?

The fact is, the former Eastern Bloc are the countries most enthusiastically embracing and encouraging freedom and the concepts of Western Civilization. Are they doing so exactly on our model? No, thank goodness. Each is taking a different approach, and in that regard they are acting much like the founding Fathers envisioned the states in the United States. Each was free to try different things, and the things that worked could then be adopted by other states while avoiding the things that failed.

Much more at the link, including Germany and the UK’s “energy suicide.”

Bonus Link: Asteroid Threat? X-Prize It. “In the long run, it will be a lot less expensive and likely to drive development of some key industries — not to mention creating new and innovative technologies and applications — than trying to run it as yet another government program.”

Hell, just dare Elon Musk to knock an asteroid around, and he might do it for kicks.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

FOLLOW THE MONEY:

Exit Question: Where does Maya Consulting get its money?

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

DEFUND NPR: If you go on X, you can watch videos of Hamas playing celebratory music as cheering and jeering crowds watch the bodies of murdered babies, their mom, and a peace activist go by. Here’s how NPR reported it: “It was definitely more somber and much less celebratory on both sides. In Gaza, large crowds gathered in Khan Younis in the South. Masked Hamas gunmen presided over a ceremony on a stage with four coffins draped in black. There were large posters on both sides of the stage in Hebrew and English, one depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a fanged vampire, another said that if Israel resumed the war, more hostages would come home in coffins.”

(I should note that NPR is just as bad on many other issues, but I happened to catch this segment involuntarily, whereas I stopped listening to NPR on my own years ago.)

Posted at 10:38 am by David Bernstein

BLOFELD HAS WON: James Bond’s long-serving producers give control to Amazon.

The James Bond film franchise will no longer be controlled by the Broccoli dynasty, after long-serving masterminds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson announced they are stepping down.

The Bond films were launched by Albert “Cubby” Broccoli in 1962, before his daughter and stepson took over.

The pair will now give creative control to Amazon MGM Studios, which was formed when Amazon bought Bond’s parent studio in 2022.

The new deal comes after mounting speculation about the fate of the British spy, four years after his last outing in No Time to Die, which was also Daniel Craig’s final appearance in the role.

Amazon will now decide which actor will take over the famous character, but there is still no timescale for when that that will happen or when the next film will be made.

Flashback to December: Amazon Owns James Bond. Unfortunately It Hates Men. “‘I have to be honest, I don’t think James Bond is a hero,’ one Amazon executive said during a recent meeting about upcoming Bond content, the outlet reported. That quote seemed to point to Broccoli’s fear that Amazon does not understand the very character that she has dedicated her career to. Of course not. If you’re a woke, why would you think a white very heterosexual male defending a colonialist entity using violence against justice-involved persons is a hero?”

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

FLASHBACK: The Clock Strikes Thirteen. “What happened? It’s like a spell broke. Since November’s election (re-election?) of President Donald Trumpov, the woke is going away, and all sorts of problems are resolving themselves. In law we talk about the proverbial thirteenth chime of the clock, which is not only wrong in itself, but which calls into question everything that has come before. Most of our institutions have been chiming thirteen for quite a while, and people have noticed.”

Posted at 9:54 am by Glenn Reynolds

SKYNET CAN’T EVEN GET REPRESENTATION: AI making up cases can get lawyers fired, scandalized law firm warns.

In a letter shared in a court filing, Morgan & Morgan’s chief transformation officer, Yath Ithayakumar, warned the firms’ more than 1,000 attorneys that citing fake AI-generated cases in court filings could be cause for disciplinary action, including “termination.”

“This is a serious issue,” Ithayakumar wrote. “The integrity of your legal work and reputation depend on it.”

Morgan & Morgan’s AI troubles were sparked in a lawsuit claiming that Walmart was involved in designing a supposedly defective hoverboard toy that allegedly caused a family’s house fire. Despite being an experienced litigator, Rudwin Ayala, the firm’s lead attorney on the case, cited eight cases in a court filing that Walmart’s lawyers could not find anywhere except on ChatGPT.

These “cited cases seemingly do not exist anywhere other than in the world of Artificial Intelligence,” Walmart’s lawyers said, urging the court to consider sanctions.

So far, the court has not ruled on possible sanctions. But Ayala was immediately dropped from the case and was replaced by his direct supervisor, T. Michael Morgan, Esq. Expressing “great embarrassment” over Ayala’s fake citations that wasted the court’s time, Morgan struck a deal with Walmart’s attorneys to pay all fees and expenses associated with replying to the errant court filing, which Morgan told the court should serve as a “cautionary tale” for both his firm and “all firms.”

I love AI, particularly for organization. But AI “hallucinations” are real and don’t seem to be getting any better.

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Media Hacks’ Trumpov ‘Gotcha!’ Questions Aren’t Getting Anyone. “he poor, pathetic dears are struggling mightily these days. After finishing out the Biden years being forced to cover their sycophantic rear ends for not noticing — their version of the story — that the President of the United States was a drooling vegetable, they’re now forced to contend with something they’ve never had to before: Republicans who won’t roll over and play dead for them.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green