May 14, 2025

MISSISSIPPI RISING: Look South for progress in reading achievement.

In 2003, Mississippi was worst in the nation, next to Washington, D.C., for fourth-grade reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), Daly writes. Now, Mississippi ranks fifth. “When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results for student demographics, Mississippi ranked first in fourth-grade reading and math, fourth in eighth-grade reading and first in math.

Black students in dirt-poor, low-spending Mississippi outperform black students elsewhere by large margins, Daly writes. “The average black student in Mississippi performed about 1.5 grade levels ahead of the average black student in Wisconsin,” which “spends about 35 percent more per pupil.”

The success of Mississippi and other Southern states “have been dutifully and perfunctorily name-checked in news stories,” Daly writes, but he sees “a reluctance among national voices to extol Deep South examples as worthy of emulation.”

That last bit speaks volumes about our elites putting snobbery over results.

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green 2

TIME TO GO FOR TERM LIMITS AMENDMENT? Analysis by Democratic firm of responses in four recent focus groups made up of swing and soft partisan voters finds disgust with and distrust of government is deep and bipartisan.

They don’t mention it but I do in my latest PJ Media column: Is such bipartisan disgust and distrust evidence that a Term Limits for Congress constitutional amendment would fare better than the one that died under the Contract with America GOP Congress in 1995?

Posted at 4:34 pm by Mark Tapscott 47

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 4:33 pm by Stephen Green 27

FUNNY HOW THIS KEEPS HAPPENING, AGAIN AND AGAIN: Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters.

U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said.
Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.
However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said.
Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.
Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at.

The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said.

Do not trust China. China is asshole.

Posted at 4:12 pm by Ed Driscoll 42

GREAT MOMENTS IN STUNT CASTING: Hollywood A-listers unrecognizable as they transform into famous NFLers for new movie.

Amazon MGM Studios has started production on its “Madden” film — and a shocking first-look photo of the film’s lead stars was released on Tuesday.

In the image, Nicolas Cage looks unrecognizable with shaggy hair as Oakland Raiders coach-turned-legendary NFL broadcaster John Madden.

The same goes for Christian Bale as Raiders owner Al Davis.

I’ll wait for the reviews, but it may be worth watching just for the casting.

Posted at 4:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 53

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Trump admin reverses Biden’s gas stove ban, take aim at climate-inspired start-stop car tech.

The Trump administration has slashed regulations concerning standards over the width of shower heads, bans on a swath of gas stoves, as well as other regulations for standards ruling over other household appliances that were imposed by the Department of Energy. This also comes as EPA head Lee Zeldin is taking aim at start-stop technology in cars, or the system that automatically turns off a car when it is stopped at a light to save gas.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Energy Department took sweeping actions on Monday to slash dozens of regulations for household appliances from dishwashers to dryers that were issued under former President Joe Biden. The regulations included restricted sales on certain types of gas stoves, faucets, shower heads, and microwaves.

“It should not be the government’s place to decide what kind of appliances you or your restaurants or your businesses can buy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright commented about the regulations. “Everybody wants clean air and wants to lower their energy costs and run their factories good as they can. The big hand of government doesn’t actually help that process at all.”

Indeed.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green 78

JIM GERAGHTY: Yes, Our President Was Senile for a Long Stretch.

Mass delusion gripped the entire Democratic Party, and they talked themselves into believing they could carry a senile president over the reelection finish line, Weekend at Bernie’s–style, if everyone just tried hard enough to gaslight the public. And as far as we can tell, at no point did any of them pause to contemplate the potential consequences for the country.

There’s something grimly satisfying about the bitter recriminations laid out in the concluding pages of Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, as the Democrats grapple with the fact that their own leaders misled them about the reality of the 2024 presidential race every step of the way.

Three weeks after Election Day, top Kamala Harris campaign staffers appeared on Pod Save America and contended their internal polling always showed the vice president trailing. “It was hard for Democratic voters to tell what was real,” Allen and Parnes write. “They had been led to believe that Joe Biden was in fighting shape. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe he was locked in a dead-heat race with Trump. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe that [Kamala] Harris was in a position to win. But she wasn’t. And now they were being led to believe she never had a chance. That wasn’t really true, either.”

And in the preceding 287 pages, we keep getting anecdotes indicating things had gone terribly, glaringly, obviously wrong in the Democrats’ world, but no one wanted to admit it and confront the problems.

After his disastrous debate performance, President Biden attempted to reassure a group of unnerved Democratic governors by telling them he would no longer plan to appear at events past 8 in the evening. Allen and Parnes say one governor later quipped, “Somebody better tell the Chinese when they can attack us, because I don’t want them to wake him up.”

Now it can be told. And then immediately forgotten once the 2028 election cycle begins:

Flashback: Gay Talese, Call Your Office!

UPDATE: Lara Trump waiting for an apology from Tapper following book release.

To be fair, we all are.

Posted at 3:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 164

KING KLAUS I: The Unraveling of the King of Davos.

I tried to find a juicy excerpt but this WSJ report is a longer one with juicy details all the way through — so the link goes to a non-paywalled version.

Posted at 3:28 pm by Stephen Green 17

LONG PAST TIME: Time to Fix the Navy’s Frigate Problem.

Most recent reports on the construction of the first U.S. Navy Constellation-class frigate are grim and filled with unwelcome news.

The first ship of the class is only 10% complete despite years of construction. The design of the ship has not been completed, and changes continue, no doubt accounting for rising costs and lengthening delays in construction.

Senior leaders at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) continue to blame industry for these problems, industry blames the Navy, and Congress penalizes the program in response.

While U.S. designs like the DDG-51 have been a “gold standard” for survivability, the Navy must strike a balance between ability to resist and sustain damage and rapid construction, perhaps across multiple ship flights, to field warships in needed numbers.

The current outlook for frigates is questionable, and does not look to improve soon. Still, the frigate is essential to the U.S. Navy force structure. The fleet has become increasingly imbalanced with more high-end ships like the DDG-51 used for low-end missions like counter-piracy and show the flag port visits.

Navies always find a need for larger numbers of smaller warships in wartime. It’s time to fix the frigate, and produce it in numbers, even at the expense of the larger DDG, and pair all manned combatant ships with unmanned “sidekicks” that add additional firepower and more options for distributed capacity.

The Navy couldn’t take a proven design like the FREMM without twisting it into something that can’t come in anywhere close to on time or on budget.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green 165

THE BIGGEST STORY EVERYBODY MISSED, A THREAD:

A few bullet points:

  • What does this do? The most important part is that every agency has 365 days to list out all the regulations that have a criminal penalty and then that report has to be made public.
  • All future regs have to state criminal offenses clearly. Mens rea is back on the menu! The default will be to require mens rea.
  • This EO is tremendously important and will have direct, and hopefully immediate, affect on more or less everyone in America. And did you hear anything about it? Anything at all?

    • Read the whole thing.

    Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green 34

    BASTIAT’S WINDOW: Persuasive Beats Abrasive. 12 suggestions for Democrats on how they might win back skeptical voters.

    Posted at 2:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 47

    ROBERT SPENCER: Trump Shocks the World — Again. “In many ways, Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa is as momentous, and could be more momentous, than his first-term overtures to Kim Jong Un. The two meetings come from the same wellsprings: Trump is attempting to break longstanding logjams and end the status quo that the foreign policy establishment, both inside the U.S. and elsewhere, had come to take for granted.”

    Posted at 2:17 pm by Stephen Green 40

    CHANGE: MLB reinstates Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, making them Hall of Fame eligible.

    Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson were reinstated by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday, making both eligible for the sport’s Hall of Fame after their careers were tarnished by gambling scandals.

    Rose’s permanent ban was lifted eight months after his death and came a day before the Cincinnati Reds will honor baseball’s career hits leader with Pete Rose Night.

    Manfred announced Tuesday he was changing the league’s policy on permanent ineligibility, saying bans would expire at death. MLB said 17 individuals had their status changed by the decision, including all eight banned members of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, former Philadelphia Phillies president Williams D. Cox and former New York Giants outfielder Benny Kauff.

    Under the Hall of Fame’s current rules, the earliest Rose or Jackson could be inducted would be in 2028.

    Faster, please.

     

    Posted at 2:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 129

    “WEAK” IS THE WORD:

    Posted at 1:56 pm by Stephen Green 46

    MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: New Beard, Same Buttigieg. “The beard jokes write themselves, but I’m not here to take cheap shots at Buttigieg; I’m here to take high-class, data-rich cheap shots.”

    Posted at 1:15 pm by Stephen Green 60

    NO. NEXT QUESTION? Are “Tiny Homes” The New Solution To Homelessness? New video from Matt Walsh:

    Posted at 1:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 151

    THE NEW SPACE RACE:

    I’d just add that the New Space Race would only be half as exciting without SpaceX’s unprecedented transparency for a launch company.

    Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green 19