HOW’S THIS FOR POETIC JUSTICE? Tapper’s CNN Show Tanks Despite Book Tour.
You know, it’s just possible that “I was ignorant and afraid” isn’t a good look for a journalist.
May 30, 2025
HMM: Credit default swaps are back in fashion — even if the panic might be overblown. “Credit default swaps are like insurance for investors. Buyers pay a fee to protect themselves in case the borrower — in this case the U.S. government — can’t repay their debt. When the cost of insuring the U.S. debt goes up, it’s a sign that investors are getting nervous.”
Hey, Congress — think this is maybe another indicator you might want to cut some spending?
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Sydney Sweeney To Start Selling Soap With Her Own Bathwater Mixed In.
Famous actress Sydney Sweeney joined forces with Dr. Squatch Soap Co. to make her dirty bathwater available for fans across the globe.
The superstar just made soap a little dirty, according to an Instagram post shared Thursday by Dr. Squatch, a personal care product company. Sweeney will dunk herself in bathwater that will be bottled up, turned into beauty soap, and sent to those that want to lather up with this intimate item.
“You kept asking about my bathwater after the @drsquatch ad… so we kept it. Introducing Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss! A very real, very limited-edition soap made with my actual bathwater,” Sweeney wrote May 29 on her official Instagram page.
Ayn Rand didn’t intend for The Return of the Primitive to be a how-to guide.
THEY HAVEN’T LEARNED THEIR LESSON YET: Columbia investigates student for criticizing transgenderism on social media: Being Catholic in public is not an offense on Columbia’s campus,’ free speech expert says.
Are you sure?
YUGE:
🚨BREAKING: Personal income skyrocketed by 0.8% in April which is 3x the expectation.
The Trump Effect.
pic.twitter.com/mUoLy8rnmF— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 30, 2025
FUN GIFT: Slushie Machine, No Ice Needed. #CommissionEarned
THEY STILL SOMEHOW BELIEVE GOV. JAZZ HANDS IS MANLY:
Every post by a Democrat about White guys is like, "We have to figure out how to appeal to White men, but it's hard because they're evil." https://t.co/nShX7U8Id1
— Roman Helmet Guy (@romanhelmetguy) May 30, 2025
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: No-zero grading lets no-show students graduate: ‘Just crazy.’
In Chicago, where fewer students are showing up and more are earning diplomas, some high schools are abandoning no-zero grading, report Mila Koumpilova and Sarah Karp on Chalkbeat.
At Richards Career Academy High School, which primarily enrolls Hispanic and black students from low-income families, “grading for equity” was introduced in 2019 to help ninth graders pass courses. “Students could redo assignments repeatedly and turn in work late. Even if they didn’t complete the assignment, the lowest score they could get was 50 rather than zero — a concept known as no-zero grading,” they write. When the pandemic closed schools, leniency spread to all classes.
No-zero grading is supposed to encourage students to keep trying after a missed assignment, but teachers say students can pass with little effort, and without learning the importance of showing up and doing the work. They worry they won’t be prepared for college or the workforce.
That’s because they won’t be.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Carhartt Men’s Force Relaxed Fit Midweight Short-Sleeve Pocket T-Shirt. #CommissionEarned
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Open Borders Dems Can Never Wash the Blood Off of Their Hands. “Democratic politicians and their rancid lapdogs in the mainstream media keep prattling on about how mean the Trump administration is as it rounds up and deports people who shouldn’t be here. In their decades-long fictional immigration story, it’s only sweet people who are looking for a better life who come into this country illegally. They completely ignore the existence of cartels and act as if brutal tragedies like this one are anomalous.”
MARK JUDGE: Robert Novak and the Problem of Contemporary Conservative Media. “I’m going to be leaving journalism this year, so in reflecting on this decision and the state of our media, particularly conservative media, I found myself recalling the work of Robert Novak. While conservative media has exploded since Novak’s death in 2009, his tenacious style of reporting has not expanded along with it. As revealed in his 2008 autobiography The Prince of Darkness, Novak was conservative, but one who insisted on digging for new stories and not just spouting off in response to stories reported by the liberal media.”
TURNAROUND? Boeing CEO says company is ‘pretty confident’ it is ready to increase 737 MAX output.
Boeing is currently trying to stabilize production at 38 per month, where it was capped by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in 2024 after a midair accident put the planemaker’s safety and production quality program under new scrutiny.
After the FAA approves Boeing increasing output to 42 a month, “we do have subsequent rate increases in our plan,” which will typically be in increments of five aircraft a month and at least six months apart, he said.
Ortberg has previously stressed that production must be stable before any rate increase.
Production defects on the 737 program are down by 30%, Ortberg said. “Virtually every one of our customers is reporting a higher quality of airplane at delivery.”
Increasing production is critical in getting Boeing back to being cash positive, which Ortberg has previously said he expects to achieve in the second half of the year. The company burned through $2.3 billion in cash during the first quarter.
“I think the financial performance will follow the production performance … and I think we need to think about it that way,” Ortberg said.
Focus on the quality and the profits will follow.
I now start with the presumption that this sort of thing is a hoax and I’m seldom wrong.
ANYBODY WHO TRUSTED HAMAS, FOR STARTERS: Whose Fault Is the Gaza Aid Fiasco?
THE STANDARDIZATION OF DEMORALIZATION: Mark Judge: An interview with Jennifer Hofmann.
THERE’S STILL SOME LIFE LEFT IN THE LEAD SLED: F-4 Phantoms Sought By Private Space Launch Company Starfighters International.
The Kennedy Space Center-based research, test, and now space launch company Starfighters International, which has been flying F-104 Starfighters privately for decades is now, is in the process of acquiring a dozen F-4 Phantoms. The deal would see the iconic third-generation Cold War fighters fly primarily in service of the firm’s space launch operations, which aim to provide rapid and flexible access to low Earth orbit (LEO) for small satellites, as well as suborbital offerings.
Starfighters International began as a company around three decades ago, and grew from doing air shows to becoming largely a research and development support firm with a very unique address. The company and its fleet of antique Mach 2-capable F-104 Starfighters, which includes seven airframes today, moved into Kennedy Space Center in 2007. There they would have access to arguably one of the most famous and largest runways on earth, the Shuttle Landing Facility. Now they are in the process of building a 150,000-square-foot facility in Midland, Texas, to support the firm’s more ambitious space launch aims.
And this is precisely where the F-4 Phantoms come into play.
While the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is capable of zooming up into the stratosphere at high speed, they cannot carry heavier, outsized launch vehicles at the required performance that will allow larger payloads to be inserted into low Earth orbit. The F-4s — at least in concept — can.
More lift is always better.
DON SURBER: It’s Democrat policies, stupid.
IS THIS THE MOMENT WHEN THE ZEITGEIST SHIFTS? The NYT asks: “What would make you want to have more children?” They’re even worrying about the impact of society’s treatment of men!
Welcome to the party, pal!
Related: Harrison Butker, Harbinger? Life during and after the coming Demographic Winter.
I’D LIKE TO SEE AN IRS RULE ON TREATMENT OF EXCESSIVE UNRECOUPED ADVANCES:
Do publishing houses next. Find out where the advances come for the leftist politician books! https://t.co/OT4blXbM84
— Sarah A. Hoyt (@SarahAHoyt) May 29, 2025
MAKE THEM PAY: Florida Appellate Court to Pulitzer Board: Stand Up And Take Your Medicine in Trump Defamation Case. “Talk about desperation. Why would the Pulitzer board try to get out of a trial with a claim of executive privilege? Are they that afraid of losing at trial? They should be, given what Senior Judge Robert Pegg had to say in his ruling on their initial motion for dismissal.”
I WAS FEELING FAIRLY TERRIBLE ALL DAY YESTERDAY, SO MY ASSISTANT DID THE BLOG: Just a little Skip–No Man’s Land Teaser.
