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Friday, May 2, 2025

Second teen accused of sparking NJ wildfire that has torched 15K acres

A second teenager is accused of sparking the massive wildfire in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

A 17 year-old boy was charged with aggravated arson and hindering apprehension Wednesday for helping to ignite the fire that has burned more than 15,000 acres, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. He is not being identified because he is a minor.

Police say the teen helped Joseph Kling, 19, set wooden pallets on fire and that he lied to police about how the fire started.

Kling was arrested last week and charged with aggravated arson. He now faces an additional charge of hindering apprehension.

New Jersey firefighters battled the fierce blaze in the southern part of the state that took days to contain, and was thought to be the largest wildfire in the Garden State in the last 20 years.

A column of smoke was first spotted from the Cedar Bridge Fire Tower in Barnegat Township on April 22, and the fire quickly spread out of control, forcing the evacuation of 5,000 residents, and cutting electricity to 25,000 Garden Staters.

The blaze burned 15,300 acres in Waretown and Lacey Township, destroyed a commercial building and prompted an air quality advisory in New Jersey, New York City, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties.

The cause of the fire was determined to be an improperly extinguished bonfire.

https://nypost.com/2025/05/02/us-news/second-teen-accused-of-sparking-nj-wildfire-that-has-torched-15k-acres-in-pine-barrens/

Musk and his DOGE team reveal that our government is operating at African levels of corruption

By Andrea Widburg

One of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read is Keith Richburg’s 1997 Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. In it, Richburg, who had a three-year stint as the Washington Post’s African bureau chief, explains why he’s so grateful that his long-ago ancestors endured the horrors of the slave ships and the dehumanizing indignity of slavery itself: If that hadn’t happened, he would have been born in Africa and that, he realized, would have been a terrible thing.

One of the chief problems Richburg describes about Africa in the early 1990s is government corruption. According to him, the corruption is so complete that government agencies are incapable of carrying out their mandates, since everything goes into the bureaucrats’ pockets. According to Elon Musk and his DOGE team’s analyses, our government is operating at almost the same level. No country with a government like that can thrive or even survive.

Here's the joke from Richburg’s book:

So endemic is African corruption—and so much more destructive than its Asian counterpart—that the comparison has even spawned a common joke that goes like this:
An Asian and an African become friends while they are both attending graduate school in the West. Years later, they each rise to become the finance minister of their respective countries. One day, the African ventures to Asia to visit his old friend, and is startled by the Asian’s palatial home, the three Mercedes-Benzes in the circular drive, the swimming pool, the servants.
“My God!” the African exclaims. “We were just poor students before! How on earth can you now afford all this?”
And the Asian takes his African friend to the window and points to a sparkling new elevated highway in the distance. “You see that toll road?” says the Asian, and then he proudly taps himself on the chest. “Ten percent.” And the African nods approvingly.
A few years later, the Asian ventures to Africa, to return the visit to his old friend. He finds the African living in a massive estate sprawling over several acres. There’s a fleet of dozens of Mercedes-Benzes in the driveway, an indoor pool and tennis courts, an army of uniformed chauffeurs and servants. “My God!” says the Asian. “How on earth do you afford all this?”
This time the African takes his Asian friend to the window and points. “You see that highway?” he asks. But the Asian looks and sees nothing, just an open field with a few cows grazing.

“I don’t see any highway,” the Asian says, straining his eyes.
At this, the African smiles, taps himself on the chest, and boasts, “One hundred percent!”
The joke was first told to me by an American diplomat in Nigeria who had also spent time in Indonesia. It carried a poignant message about the debilitating effects of corruption in Africa versus its more benign counterpart in Asia. (pp. 174—175.)

The book goes on to recount how, in Indonesia, the fix may be in—that is, nepotism or other favoritism may affect the flow of government money—but things still get done. In Africa, however, the government allocates taxpayer (and U.S. aid) money to the various departments, ostensibly to provide services for the taxpayers’ benefit, but overwhelming graft means that nothing gets done.

With that joke as the backdrop, consider what Elon Musk and his DOGE team describe in this video: Not only is the federal government allocating our money to projects that have, at best, only a very dubious benefit to American taxpayers, but most of that money is never leaving D.C.

DOGE KID: I think the Inter American Foundation, IAF, is one of the agencies we visited where, you know, they get $50 million a year—congressional money—to give grants. These are things like, you know, alpaca farming in Peru, and giving them—
MUSK: That’s a real example.
DOGE KID: Yes. That’s the real description, improving the marketability of peas in Guatemala.
JESSE WATTERS: Really.
DOGE KID: Fruit jam and (laughter) yes.
MUSK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DOGE KID: And so, you might expect, you know, in the private sector, a nonprofit to give, you know, 80 to 90% of their money to grantees. In the case of IAF, that was 58%. So, the other half goes towards management, travel—
MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What you would find exactly, I mean to, as an example is that, even if you agreed with supporting alpaca farmers in Peru, well, actually most of the money never made it out of DC. It’s going into the pockets of people in the neighborhood and—
JESSE WATTERS: What percentage of—
MUSK: It didn’t get to Peru.
JESSE WATTERS: Right. So, what percentage do you think doesn’t even get to the destination it’s supposed to?
MUSK: I believe the GAO estimate—so this is not our estimate—I believe it was on the order of only 10 to 15 cents on the dollar actually gets to the end recipient, whether you agree with that cause or not.
JESSE WATTERS: So, they’re just stealing the money before it even gets anywhere.
MUSK: Yes. There’s layers of stealing. So, there’s, like, there’s the first layer of stealing, second layer of stealing, third layer of stealing.
JESSE WATTERS: Subcontractor, subcontractor, subcontractor.
MUSK: Yeah, just peeling the onion.
JESSE WATTERS: Subcontractor, subcontractor.
MUSK: Yeah, exactly. Contractors, subcontractors, subcontractors, like peeling an onion. And then maybe—and sometimes it’s zero, just flat—you get to the bottom of the onion, there’s nothing there.
JESSE WATTERS: So, maybe, no one got a sex change in Guatemala
MUSK: It’s possible that no one got a sex change in Guatemala.

One of the points Milton Friedman has made is that government corruption, more than anything, stifles economic growth. Money that should be in citizens’ hands and flowing through the marketplace sits in bureaucrats’ hands, and the greedy bureaucrats and their political cronies come up with more and more laws and regulations to funnel taxpayer money their way. The Deep State—the mostly Democrat Deep State—doesn’t want this to change, explaining its virulent animosity to Elon Musk and President Trump.

Finally, I find it wonderfully ironic that it’s an African man who is exposing the stygian depths of African-style corruption that is breaking our government and our economy.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/musk_and_his_doge_team_reveal_that_our_government_is_operating_at_african_levels_of_corruption.html

Reuters, along with most of the media, are just pure propagandists for the Democrat party

By Jack Hellner

Here, Reuters intentionally misleads the public into believing that President Trump’s policies are leading to 20,000 layoffs at UPS:

April 29 (Reuters) - United Parcel Service said on Tuesday it would slash 20,000 jobs and shut 73 facilities as part of a planned reduction in deliveries for Amazon.com, and amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs that are roiling global trade.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The layoffs are occurring because UPS and Amazon are greatly reducing shipping volume (50%) from Amazon:

A UPS (UPS.N), opens new tab spokesperson said the layoffs are due to shedding 50% of shipping volume from Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab, its largest customer, as well as ongoing cost-cutting and efficiency projects under a major operational restructuring.

My guess is that UPS was losing its shorts on this deal, and cuts have been in the works for a long time.

The media and other Democrats are also blaming Trump’s tariff policies for causing a negative print on GDP but, of course, they aren’t telling the public the details of what caused the decline. The trade deficit has been deteriorating for decades, and in the first quarter the deficit hit a record high that shaved a “whopping” 4.8% off growth. The media and other Democrats oppose all of Trump’s efforts to correct this long-term disaster.

For four years, the Biden administration spent and printed massive amounts of money jacking up federal spending. This spending and borrowing masked a deteriorating private sector. In the first quarter, federal spending went down 5.1%, which reduced GDP growth by .3%.

So, without those two components GDP would have been exceptionally strong at over 5%. The media can’t allow the public to see the truth.

As Trump has announced trillions in private investments, the media and other Democrats are repeating the talking points (lies) that companies and countries are scared to invest in America because of Trump’s policies. But here is what investments actually did in the first quarter according to Google AI: investments soared (but the public can’t be allowed to see the truth).

In the first quarter of 2025, business investment increased by 21.9% compared to the previous quarter. This increase followed a 5.6% decline in the fourth quarter. Nonresidential investment was up 9.8% in the quarter, with a 22.5% increase in equipment spending.

Before and after the election, the media told the public that inflation would soar because of tariffs, and most Americans believe it. But commodity prices are falling, in many cases rapidly:

World Bank sees commodity prices falling to pre-COVID level
World Bank: Commodity prices to fall 12% in 2025, 5% in 2026
Falling commodity prices could moderate inflation risks from rising trade barriers-World Bank
World Bank report forecasts Brent crude at $64/barrel in 2025 vs $81 in 2024

Crude oil, for example, is down over 25% since January, and crude oil and energy prices essentially affect everything. So, what happened the last time commodity prices were this low?

Trump was president
Inflation was lower than 2%
Real wages were rising rapidly for all races, especially for those at the bottom.

And the media and other Democrats were opposing Trump’s policies at every turn and continually trying to impeach him. In other words, they haven’t changed. Results don’t matter.

When is Jerome Powell going to pay attention to facts that commodity prices are actively falling, instead of predictions? Powell seems to have been unable to analyze the causes of the higher inflation that marked the Biden years, but somehow has an ability to recognize what substantially lower energy and other prices do to inflation.

Two-year, five-year, and ten-year bond rates are all substantially lower than what the Federal Reserve is paying banks for one-day rates. They are losing billions because of this ridiculous policy that appears meant to hurt Trump. It certainly would make buying a house more unaffordable if they sensibly reduced rates.

A favorite word of the media and other Democrats these last few months has been “chaos” — but they didn’t use the term during four years of unprecedented chaos under Biden-Harris. They told Americans Biden had returned America to normalcy.

Here are some examples of what chaos looks like:

An open border which floods cities and states with millions of unvetted people including terrorists and gang members.
Cartels getting rich off of trafficking millions of people, especially children for sex.
Schools and businesses being closed by things Fauci said, not science.
Firing people for choosing not to take a vaccine.
High inflation.
Running up massive debt during a period of supposed good growth.
The Afghanistan withdrawal.
The reignition of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Hamstringing Israel from obliterating the terrorists of Hamas.
Terrorists attacking ships in the Red Sea.
Building up Iran as it seeks to build nuclear weapons and makes “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” a primary focus.
Seeking to destroy energy sources.
Using the Justice Department to go after parents who oppose pornography in schools, Catholics, and peaceful pro-life supporters.
Having unelected bureaucrats run the government and sign documents because Biden was incompetent.
Making women compete and share locker room space with men.

Here is a sample of what chaos doesn’t look like:

Enforcing the border and deporting illegals.
Bringing investments and manufacturing back.
Getting control of the bloated federal government.
Getting the price of energy down.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/reuters_along_with_most_of_the_media_are_just_pure_propagandists_for_the_democrat_party.html

'China’s “Manhattan Project”'

by Adam Sharp

Tech stocks have staged an impressive comeback since their recent mini-crash.

Is the dip over? Back to normal, with the Mag 7 once again taking center stage?

Not so fast.

American tech stocks face a number of challenges which could stop a new bull market in its tracks.

The risk we’re going to discuss today is the possibility of another surge in Chinese AI technology.

You may recall that earlier this year the release of Chinese AI model DeepSeek R1 caused quite a stir. R1 was the first state-of-the-art “reasoning” AI model which was open source, meaning it was free for anyone to use or modify.

DeepSeek R1 was trained on a budget about 95% smaller than a typical American model. So this naturally caused concern about demand for NVIDIA’s AI chips (nearly all leading AI models are built using NVIDIA chips).

After the release of R1, NVIDIA (NVDA) shares crashed from over $147 down to $118 in just a few days. Shares briefly dipped below $100, and currently trade around $114, so still haven’t fully recovered.

DeepSeek R2: Coming Soon

DeepSeek R1 rocked the world. The prior assumption that China is years behind in AI technology was forgotten. It became clear that DeepSeek has a cutting-edge team and is breaking new ground.

And despite the AI chip restrictions placed on China, they had figured out how to make competitive models anyway.

DeepSeek’s next major model, R2, will likely be released in the next few weeks. It will certainly be a major improvement from R1. And that’s a disturbing thought for American tech firms.

There are a few ways in which R2 could be a major shock to the U.S. tech system.

R1 was a major technological breakthrough, but it was still trained on American NVIDIA AI chips.

What if R2 is trained on Chinese AI hardware? China’s leading AI chip maker, Huawei, has made major advances in recent months, and is catching up to NVIDIA.

Reuters recently reported that NVIDIA met with U.S. lawmakers to discuss the rising threat of Huawei. Here’s Reuters:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discussed concerns about Huawei Technologies Co.’s growing artificial intelligence capabilities with U.S. lawmakers, according to a senior congressional committee staff source.
The issues were raised during a closed-door meeting between Nvidia executives and the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday. Among the topics discussed were Huawei’s artificial intelligence chips and how restrictions on Nvidia’s chips in China could make Huawei’s chips more competitive.
“If DeepSeek R1 had been trained on (Huawei chips) or a future open-source Chinese model had been trained to be highly optimized to Huawei chips, that would risk creating a global market demand for Huawei chips,” the senior staff source said.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang was recently in China and made the case that China is “not behind” in AI. He also called Huawei “one of the most formidable technology companies in the world”.

This is the type of honesty required to face China as a rising competitor. We underestimate the country at our own peril. As Huang recently noted, 50% of the world’s AI researchers are Chinese.

For years now, the U.S. has been restricting the flow of American and European semiconductor tech to China. This has led directly to China launching a Manhattan Project sized effort to build their own capabilities.

In May of 2023 NVIDIA CEO Huang warned that “If [China] can’t buy from … the United States, they’ll just build it themselves.”

Now we’re seeing this play out in real-time.

DeepSeek R2 will be released in the near future. If it turns out to be a breakthrough model built on Chinese AI hardware, be prepared for a double shock to American tech firms.

DeepSeek R1 signaled the end of America’s monopoly on state-of-the-art AI models. A DeepSeek R2 built on Huawei hardware would also signal the end of NVIDIA’s monopoly on deep-learning chips. And if R2 isn’t built on Chinese hardware, my guess is that R3 will be.

Don’t get me wrong, NVIDIA, and other American tech firms, will maintain big market shares going forward.

But in NVIDIA’s case, going from 98% to 70% market share in AI training would be a severe shock. Additional competition means less pricing power, lower profit margins, and a lesser network effect.

In other words, it could derail one of the greatest stock runs of all time.

https://dailyreckoning.com/chinas-manhattan-project/

Select Medical disappoints again

Shares of healthcare services company Select Medical (NYSE:SEM) fell 22.1% in the morning session after the company reported disappointing first-quarter 2025 results, with both revenue and earnings per share falling short of Wall Street's expectations. Margins declined across two of the three segments: adjusted EBITDA fell significantly in the critical illness recovery unit and slipped slightly in outpatient rehab. This margin pressure, especially in the largest business line, partly explained why adjusted EPS failed to meet expectations.

On the other hand, Select Medical beat analysts' full-year EPS guidance expectations. Still, this quarter could have been better.

The shares closed the day at $14.25, down 21.8% from previous close.

Select Medical’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 7 moves greater than 5% over the last year. Moves this big are rare for Select Medical and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 2 months ago when the stock dropped 14.1% on the news that the company reported disappointing fourth quarter 2024 results, which missed across all key operating metrics. Its full-year revenue and EBITDA guidance also fell short of Wall Street's estimates. Overall, this was a weaker quarter.

Select Medical is down 23.8% since the beginning of the year, and at $14.32 per share, it is trading 64.4% below its 52-week high of $40.20 from November 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Select Medical’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $989.63.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-select-medical-sem-shares-194227020.html

Adaptive Biotechnologies Lifts Forecasts

Adaptive Biotechnologies reported a Q1 diluted loss per share of $0.20, an improvement from last year's $0.33 loss, surpassing analysts' expectations of a $0.29 loss. Revenue for Q1 hit $52.4 million, up from $41.9 million last year, beating the expected $42.7 million. Optimism is evident as full-year revenue guidance for its Minimal Residual Disease business was raised to between $180 million and $190 million. Additionally, the firm anticipates more efficient cash use, with a revised full-year cash burn forecast of $50 million to $60 million, lower than the previous $60 million to $70 million estimate.

https://finimize.com/content/adaptive-biotechnologies-lifts-forecasts-and-sees-share-price-jump

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