April 14, 2025
MOSCOW NEEDS A FIRST-CLASS ARMY MORE THAN THEY NEED A FEW MORE SUBS: Russia To Launch Massive $100 Billion Naval Expansion. “Based on available reports and recordings of the meeting shared by state media and social media channels, Putin did not provide specifics on how the funds would be distributed or which projects would be prioritized.”
IT’S COME TO THIS: As Concert Ticket Prices Soar, More Than Half of Coachella GA Attendees Are Buying Tickets Through Payment Plans.
Tens of thousands of music fans will descend on the California desert this weekend for the first of two iterations of the Coachella Music and Arts festival outside of Palm Springs, Calif.
Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 fans each weekend will have coughed up the $599 ticket price to see headliners Lady Gaga, Travis Scott, Green Day and Post Malone. But ticket price is often just the cost of entry — many of those fans will spend more than a $1,000 per weekend on lodging and cough up hundreds of dollars more for food, drinks and merchandise. It’s a substantial spend for any of the 20-somethings in Coachella’s target demographic. But festival organizers have increasingly helped finance their purchase through payment plan programs.
Approximately 60 percent of general admission ticket buyers at this year’s festival opted to use Coachella’s payment plan system, which requires as little as $49.99 up front for tickets to the annual concert. The desert festival isn’t alone — Lollapalooza, Electric Daisy Carnival and Rolling Loud all sell the majority of their tickets using some kind of payment plan system.
Representatives at Goldenvoice, which puts on Coachella, declined to comment for this story. One source, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, told Billboard that payment plans have fundamentally changed how festivals are marketed to the public.
“Festivals are now marketing a cheap down payment as their main call to action,” the source says. “The messaging is $20 down gets you in the door, or $50 down gets you started. It’s no longer about the artists, or the festival lifestyle — the message is, ‘You can afford this if you act today.’”
Yes, but it’s not just Lady Gaga, Travis Scott, Green Day and Post Malone. There was also this brilliant veteran rap star spitting bars, and dropping some dope verses, straight fire: Bernie Sanders urges Coachella crowd to stand up against ‘US oligarchy.’
Senator Bernie Sanders held celebrity-backed rallies across the US as he emerges as one of the most vocal opponents to Donald Trump’s presidency.
Appearing for his war on extreme wealth tour – called Fighting Oligarchy – at the exclusive Coachella festival this weekend, he said: “This country faces some very difficult challenges and the future of what happens to America depends on your generation.”
Taking to the stage after a performance by the British pop singer Charli XCX he told the 36,000-strong crowd: “We need you to stand up.”
“You can turn away and ignore what goes on but you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up to fight for justice.”
“Fighting Oligarchy” is definitely Bernie’s greatest hits package, crafted from years of extensive jamming on the road, and presumably went down well with the young potentially violent socialists in the crowd:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2025
Related: Festival guests report stolen belongings from hotel rooms during Coachella.
Multiple Coachella festivalgoers contacted News Channel 3, saying their belongings were stolen from their hotel rooms while they were away at the festival.
Ellie Brownridge said she’s attended Coachella for years with her best friend, Zoe Grober.
Grober said they’ve stayed at La Quinta Resort & Club before.
“We always love this property,” Grober said. “It’s just so disappointing that something like this happened and it’s totally tainted the experience.”
Brownridge and Grober, staying with their husbands, said they returned Saturday morning after the first day of Coachella to find personal items missing — including vintage bags, jewelry, family heirlooms and sunglasses.
They told News Channel 3 they called hotel management and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — and quickly learned they weren’t alone.
“We met two other groups. In total, I think it’s like 15 people that we know of that this has happened to,” Brownridge said. “I think we’re looking at over $100,000 worth of stuff that’s gone.”
I was told in 2020 by Bernie’s supporters — including the New York Times and NPR — that this sort of five-fingered wealth distribution was perfectly acceptable. I’m glad to see that’s apparently no longer the case.
TARIFFS ARE GOING TO BE A REAL PROBLEM FOR THEM:
This is from @BrookingsInst – Not MAGA or @POTUS
CCP is flooding world markets with subsidized goods. This is how Xi fights for survival.
—@YatesComms @DominoTheoryPod @YatesComms @seanmdav @MariaBartiromo @andrewrsorkin @nedryun @DonaldJTrumpJr @instapundit @ImKingGinger… https://t.co/t5yhe8p95n— Mark Simon (@MarkSimonHK) April 14, 2025
Note how “staff” and “administrators” are way ahead of faculty.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: ICE Detains ‘Sushi John’ the Chinese Spy.
POLICE: Arson Suspect Admitted ‘Harboring Hatred’ Toward Gov. Shapiro.
[Cody] Balmer faces numerous charges including:
- Criminal Attempt – Criminal Homicide
- Aggravated Arson – Person Present Inside Property
- Terrorism – Affect the Conduct of a Government
6ABC reported that the police “have not ruled out Shapiro’s Jewish faith” as a possible motive.”
What little is known about Balmer, the suspected Jew-hating arsonist, paints the picture that he isn’t a resident of either side of the political aisle. He seems to be A) a nut, and B) an anarchist, which if you look up the definition of an anarchist, it’ll say see A). He once proclaimed on social media that he was a socialist, but there’s not much other evidence out there to back up that claim. What is there is that he hated everybody on both sides.
I hope that Kash Patel at FBI gets to the bottom quickly of what made this person snap, and I hope that Attorney General Pam Bondi, if he did it out of religious bigotry, throws the book at him, despite whatever political affiliation, if any, he currently espouses.
I am grateful that Governor Shapiro and his family are safe. As for the Governor’s ‘both sidesism’, we all have eyes and ears, and functioning brainstems. It’s not hard to see where the bulk of the outbreaks of anti-Semitism are falling on the ideological spectrum recently. It’s not on the right. It’s on the left. Using moral equivalence to downplay the explosion of hate against Jews on the Democratic side isn’t going to make the problem go away. Putting political expediency over morality reduces the spotlight on the true offenders of evil instead of shining the light brightly on these cockroaches wherever they surface.
I want to help dig a giant pit and assist the rest of the country in dropping every anti-Semite into it, regardless of whom they voted for in the last few cycles. If this latest fire outbreak of hate is happening mostly on the left, however, perhaps that’s the direction where we should be applying the most water.
The day after Balmer’s arson attack on the PA governor, CNN was in a festive mood regarding political violence in general: CNN blasted for segment calling Luigi Mangione a ‘morally good man. “’CNN is a bad joke of a new org and Lorenz is a nut job. She said Mangione is a ‘morally good man’ which is absurd, as he killed a man in cold blood,’ another said. ‘The more I think about the Donie O’Sullivan interview with Taylor Lorenz the more astonished I am that they were laughing when talking about a guy who shot a man in the back in cold blood,’ a third person fumed.”
SPACE: Katy Perry, 4 other women, return safely from spaceflight. “But it was all over quickly: The New Shepard crew capsule touched down under parachutes about 10.5 minutes after launch today, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the West Texas sky.”
READER FAVORITE: First Aid Beauty – KP Bump Eraser Body Scrub. #CommissionEarned
HMM: Iran Has a Reason to Strike a Nuclear Deal: Its Economy Is in Trouble.
Iran’s currency is among the weakest in the world. Inflation remains well above 30%. Young people are struggling to find work, and a frustrated middle class can no longer afford to buy imported goods.
Those troubles look set to intensify under a second Trump administration, which resumed its campaign of “maximum pressure” to force Iran to rein in its nuclear program and prevent it from developing a bomb. Already severely strained by sanctions and endemic corruption, political observers and analysts say a further deterioration of Iran’s economy could push its people to the brink.
“This is a country that’s creaking under the pressure of economic sanctions, sustained mismanagement and corruption,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “Ultimately, what they seek is durable sanctions relief, and they believe that Donald Trump could perhaps deliver that in a way that the Biden administration couldn’t.”
Officials from the U.S. and Iran convened in the Omani capital on Saturday for their highest-level talks in years, pledging to keep a conversation going. Washington wants a new deal to curb Tehran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for lifting sanctions, after abandoning an earlier one during President Trump’s first term.
Lifting the sanctions is a bad idea.
THE LEFT MADE THE NEW RULES:
This is going to be my face every time a Democrat asks me to “tone down the rhetoric” or “denounce political violence”. This right here.
We’re going to have a universal standard or we’re not going to have one at all. I’m done with one way streets. https://t.co/Hud7H7zgKy
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) April 14, 2025
Related: So a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Normalizing Political Assassinations…
CHINA CENTURY THAT NEVER WAS: Over on Substack today, Rod Martin’s guest author is Yi Fuxian. Remember that name because this guy knows China like few others in the world. In “The End of the Chinese Dream,” Fuxian explains why two decades ago he described China as “A Big Country With an Empty Nest.” It’s even more relevant today.
CHANGE (IT BACK): US Military Academies End Racial Preferences in Admissions.
The policy changes that prompted the request for a pause, the academies said, stem from directives issued by President Donald Trump, whose administration is committed to dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across all branches of the U.S. military as part of a broader effort to refocus the military.
To implement the president’s vision for the military, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered his department to eliminate DEI initiatives and offices, including ceasing the practice of considering race or sex when admitting cadets to military academies.
The U.S. Air Force Academy, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, stated in its letter that it has already ended race-based admissions practices following a series of White House and Pentagon directives. These include, most recently, a Feb. 6 memorandum issued by acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Gwendolyn DeFilippi, who ordered the elimination of “quotas, objectives, and goals based on sex, race, or ethnicity for organizational composition, academic admission, career fields, or class composition.”
Well, good — assuming they don’t just take quotas underground.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: Trump’s demands of universities ‘echo’ Hitler’s and Stalin’s. Heh. Sure they do, champ.
GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Why LA Knows That Karen Bass Can’t Get it Done. “This week we found out that the Los Angeles mayor’s office has only managed to get four building permits pushed through her city’s sausage making machine. Seventy-two are in the queue. The multimillionaire named to be the sherpa by which all things are rebuilt, has been allowed to fade into the sunset.”
CHANGE: Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy party moves to disband as freedoms dwindle.
Pro-democracy protests that paralyzed Hong Kong in 2019 led to a crackdown that has all but silenced dissent through restricted elections, media censorship and a China-imposed national security law that saw some of Yeung’s party members jailed. Dozens of civil society groups closed down.
Former chairperson Yeung said in an interview with The Associated Press that Chinese officials told him the party needed to disband. He urged his members to support the motion to give the leadership mandate to handle the process.
“I’m not very happy about it,” said Yeung. “But I can see if we refuse the call to disband, we may pay a very huge price for it.”
Others received similar messages.
“One country, two systems” lasted longer than I thought it might, honestly.
WHEN YOU MAKE UNIVERSITIES AN ARM OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THEY BECOME AN ARM OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: How Obama and Biden Paved the Way for Trump’s Attacks on Universities: “Universities were bending over for federal funds long before Trump,” writes Laura Kipnis. Democrats just assumed that they would always control the federal government, even when it was nominally in Republican hands. Wrong!
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Butter, Meet Hot Knife — Trump Keeps Cutting Through Media’s TDS Noise. “The Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been loudly lamenting Trump’s loyalty demands for his second go-round in the Oval Office because the loyalty interferes with their plans. They aren’t having any luck picking off those closest to the president. As I’ve written a couple of times, Trump is now surrounded by people who aren’t eager to rush out and write backstabbing tell-all books.”
THE STRATEGY? LET THEM TALK: Now We Know Why Democrats Are Losing the Messaging War.
THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: First Constellation Frigate Only 10% Complete, Design Still Being Finalized.
The first Constellation class frigate for the U.S. Navy is just 10 percent complete more than two years after construction began and nearly five years after the award of the initial contract for the ship. The work is also continuing despite the continued absence of a firm functional design for the vessel, which is still weeks or even months away from being finalized and approved.
Major changes to the Constellation’s configuration compared to its parent Franco-Italian Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM) have already led to serious delays and cost increases, and there are growing questions about the program’s future. A key program goal had been to take an in-service design that would only need relatively minor modifications to make it ready for Navy use, which would help keep the work on schedule and budget. The opposite has now happened.
Mark Vandroff, senior vice president of Government Affairs at Fincantieri Marine Group, confirmed the state of progress on the construction of the USS Constellation and provided an update on the program to TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the floor of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition earlier this week. 19FortyFive had first reported that the lead ship in the Constellation class was only 10 percent complete last month, citing an anonymous source.
The whole idea of the Constellation was to take the proven FREMM class, customize it just a little for the US Navy’s needs, but otherwise leave the design alone and get it into service quickly.
But the Navy had to go and screw it up.
