October 12, 2024
Renaissance People
The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88. Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise. At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.Multi-talented individuals have certainly had a profound impact through the ages, and have been crucial to the formation of our country.
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The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival
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Daily Tech News 12 October 2024
Top Story
- One of the two quartz mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is in the process of reopening after the area was devastated by Hurricane Helene ten days ago. (Tom's Hardware)
Faster than I had expected.
Chip fabrication depends on ultra-pure silicon. To make the ingots of ultra-pure silicon, you need crucibles to melt the silicon in, that are of even higher purity. That's where these two quartz mines come in.
Chipmakers have a supply of pre-made silicon because they're not idiots, and the silicon makers likely have a supply of crucibles, but a closure lasting more than a couple of months could have started causing problems.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (138) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 11, 2024
The Best Things In Life Are ONT
Evening Horde! Say, have all Morons in areas hit by the hurricanes checked in?
Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:03 PM | Comments (338) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Yom Kippur Cafe
Tokyo City Blues
This Golden served as an adoptive mother to baby tigers, and she continues keeping them in line even when they're massive. (IG) Baby bear and baby tiger become frenz. (IG) Another sus friendship. Every man not-so-secretly yearns to raise a wolf. (IG) Not all heroes wear capes. Remember when you were a kid, and your shadow was your only friend? Or was that just me? (IG) Awww: Mother Golden visits sick son at the pet emergency room. Chipmunk yoga. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. I got a fast dog... No! Don't throw that corgi out of the airplane! Cats sleep in funny positions sometimes. "I got a stick!" Rescuing a cat who climbed beyond his reach. Kitten thinks he's Tim Walz. He's flashing Jazz Hands like they're gang signs. Teasing a poor doggo with his favorite words. The right way to care for your dog during a hurricane. Dog meets the new kittens. Aw. Making frenz with the new kid.
Tokyo City Blues
This Golden served as an adoptive mother to baby tigers, and she continues keeping them in line even when they're massive. (IG) Baby bear and baby tiger become frenz. (IG) Another sus friendship. Every man not-so-secretly yearns to raise a wolf. (IG) Not all heroes wear capes. Remember when you were a kid, and your shadow was your only friend? Or was that just me? (IG) Awww: Mother Golden visits sick son at the pet emergency room. Chipmunk yoga. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. I got a fast dog... No! Don't throw that corgi out of the airplane! Cats sleep in funny positions sometimes. "I got a stick!" Rescuing a cat who climbed beyond his reach. Kitten thinks he's Tim Walz. He's flashing Jazz Hands like they're gang signs. Teasing a poor doggo with his favorite words. The right way to care for your dog during a hurricane. Dog meets the new kittens. Aw. Making frenz with the new kid.
Posted by: Ace at 07:15 PM | Comments (262) | Trackbacks (Suck)
NYT: The Secret Service is Understaffed and Unable to Protect Its Clients Because a Lot of Secret Service Veterans Are Quitting
The Times (link to archive.is):
Charlie KirkWe can imagine why older men are leaving -- forced out of the organization to make room for the Strong and Empowered round women who we saw spectacularly failing to protect Trump in the lethal Butler media-incited assassination attempt. The New York Times doesn't mention this, of course. But yes, the Secret Service is pushing hard to get "30 by 30" -- 30% female "represenation" not in just the agency, but specifically in the gun-carrying, body-shielding protective division. Despite not many women being in the "feeder" jobs that the Secret Service draws from -- the military, civilian law enforcement. A lot of Office Effie's and Chairbound Charlottes are being given a gun and a pair of sunglasses and don't you worry about how that will work out, they'll make sure all of the experienced male Secret Service agents are assigned to protect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and of course Jill Biden.
@charliekirk11 The New York Times has a devastating article on the condition of the Secret Service under the Biden/Harris administration. Agents are leaving in droves, especially the most talented and capable ones. Hiring standards have "slumped" -- though the Times won't say it, we know from other reports that DEI played a big role. The second-in-command of the men guarding the White House moonlighted as a real estate agent, and gave promotions to agents who became his clients. "Nepotism, favoritism, corruption -- that is part of our culture here." The Secret Service is supposed to be the best of the best. Under the left, they've become a joke -- just like the rest of the country.
The Times (link to archive.is):
Gee, why were unqualified people suddenly being "ushered in" to the Secret Service? Previously it had brought in mostly-qualified people. What changed? Apparently they don't have many agents assigned to Trump at all -- they just put out a call days before an event looking for "bodies." They're putting together Trump's "protection" haphazardly, slap-dashedly, begging people to come in and work some overtime, instead of giving him a permanent team that can learn to work well with each other. They're trying to kill him, in other words.
This time, he was part of the detail providing protection for President Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Pangs of fatigue snaked up his legs from hours of standing on a concrete floor of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, about 3,000 miles from his home. "I got to the point where I just said, 'You know, I don't think I want to do it anymore.'" Mr. Ebey put in his papers to retire in January. He was 52 years old.
For months, alarm had been spreading through the executive offices on the eighth floor of the Secret Service headquarters in Washington over the flight of experienced talent like Mr. Ebey.
The agency knew it would face an avalanche in 2024. There would be presidential campaigns. Political conventions. A NATO summit. It was looking to be one of the busiest years in the Secret Service's recent history, even as threats of violence against political leaders were rising. The service was not ready. "Now more than ever, it is critical that we retain employees," Kimberly A. Cheatle, the Secret Service director at the time, wrote in an agencywide email in July 2023. But instead of growing, as the big year approached, the service shrank. At least 1,400 of its 7,800 employees left in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the largest outflow from the agency in at least two decades, federal data show. This summer, two assassination attempts against former President Donald J. Trump revealed deep problems in the Secret Service. Failures in technology meant a would-be assassin was able to use a drone for surveillance. Failures in command meant a nearby rooftop was left unprotected for him to climb. Failures in communication meant he was able to fire, even after being spotted.
But agents say one problem underlies all the others: an exodus of the best-trained people. Their departures, partly rooted in longstanding failures by the Secret Service management, have left agents in a kind of permanent state of emergency, lacking the focus, rest and training necessary to do their jobs well, more than two dozen current and former employees told The New York Times. Among the reasons they leave: Crushing amounts of overtime work, often assigned at the last minute and sometimes without pay. An initiative to rehire retired Secret Service agents, which backfired by spurring more employees to retire so they could be paid a salary and a pension at once. Perceptions of favoritism in promotions and hiring, including an episode in which the agency's chief uniformed officer moonlighted as a real-estate agent for subordinates, who then won promotions. ...
The loss of so many valuable agents might be less of a crisis if enough people -- and the right people -- were ready and waiting to take their place. But management had not solved that problem either. Recruiting standards slumped, longtime agents said, as the agency ushered more people in the door.
... But even then, he was required to help with protective duty during busy times. He missed weeks with his family, as short-handed bosses would come to agents saying, "We're looking for bodies" to protect one leader or another, including Mr. Trump.
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Is America's Embarrassing Alcoholic Ex-Sidepiece Collapsing?
David Strom assembles some evidence suggesting she is.
Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:56 PM | Comments (338) | Trackbacks (Suck)
New York Times: It's Time to End Masculinity. All Masculinity. Even the So-Called "Positive Masculinity" Exemplified by Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff.
Plus: GAINZZZ
Plus: GAINZZZ
We Can Do Better Than 'Positive Masculinity By Ruth WhippmanWell that poor boy is a lost soul, huh?
Ms. Whippman is the author of "BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity."
And what a job he's doing proving those credentials!
Perhaps it's a predictable irony that in an election cycle that could realistically deliver the first female president, so much of the commentary has been about men. Or rather, not about men exactly, but about "masculinity." Because somehow, in 2024, we still find ourselves unable to talk about men and boys without using masculinity as the basic frame of reference. The electorate is faced with a choice, the story goes, between two models for masculinity. Toxic versus positive. In response to the vein-popping, furious, felon model of the right, the left is offering us a more morally upstanding and expansive "positive masculinity." "Positive masculinity" has been around for a while. Most likely coined in early 2000s by psychologists as a way of working with male patients in therapy... Masculinity has had an unfairly bad rap, its proponents argue, becoming permanently shackled to the word "toxic." Positive masculinity is an attempt to rebrand and reinstate it for the next generation, often with the claim that unlike the insecure posturing of the shirt-ripping strongmen, this is in fact "real" manhood. The model is not a radical departure. Positive masculinity still draws on all the old trappings and anxieties of traditional manliness, the same belief that there is such a thing as a "real man" and the same fears of falling short. As its political standard-bearer, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, is still required to constantly prove his masculine credentials.
It's all about de-gendering men. The Rainbow Mafia talks about the pain of being trained to feel attraction to people you feel no attraction to, and being forced to live an identity which feels ill-fitting, alien, and wrong. I believe them. But I guess the plan is to force all boys to live that way, and to force their brains into living the lie of genderless pseudo-homosexuality. And we're expected to support this. We're expected to consign half of our population to the same hell that LGBT people complain of -- just to make girls feel better, or whatever justification they're giving for their endless war on normal, healthy boys. An update to an earlier post about the Democrats' inept scramble to convince straight, normie men they totally don't hate them:
After the cartoon supervillainy of Donald Trump and the smarmy misogyny of JD Vance, the "positive masculinity" of Walz and his ilk is a joyful relief, and these programs are often doing good work. But when it comes to truly shifting cultural norms for the next generation of boys and allowing them to embrace their full humanity without shame, we might do better to ditch the masculinity rhetoric altogether. Because rather than challenging the old stereotypes and patterns, the whole positive masculinity framework actually seems to be reinforcing them. ...
There is a lurking sexism in the whole positive masculinity conceit. If we have to attach the label "masculine" to a behavior before it can have value to men, then we are subtly communicating that embracing anything associated with women is a demotion, even an indignity. "Positive masculinity" is not about de-gendering universal human qualities, and certainly not about encouraging boys to believe that they could have something to learn from women or female cultural norms.
Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (522) | Trackbacks (Suck)
As Kamala's Polling Stops Bringing Joy, the Campaign Brings In the Big Manly Men to Appeal to Male Voters
He's kicking this tour off by going on, get this, ABC "News," to talk with ex-footballer Michael Strahan, who will no doubt praise him as a real man that black male voters should look up to.
Kamala Harris is dispatching Tim Walz to turn out male voters. Faced with a serious polling deficit among young men, Harris' campaign is dispatching the Minnesota governor on a man-focused media blitz on Friday, including football-focused TV interviews and pheasant hunting with digital influencers, according to details shared first with POLITICO.This sissy ran away from war and deserted his unit, leaving it without a leader. But he sprays some pellets at some birds so he's totally manly.
He's kicking this tour off by going on, get this, ABC "News," to talk with ex-footballer Michael Strahan, who will no doubt praise him as a real man that black male voters should look up to.
... Then, the governor will return to Minnesota, where he'll deliver the pep talk to Mankato West's football team, his former football squad, ahead of their game against rivals Mankato East. And on Saturday morning, Walz will take a group of social media influencers, including veterans advocate David Boomer and a Black rodeo star Ramontay McConnell, pheasant hunting in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. Walz's folksy relatability on TV -- famously tagging Republicans as "weird" -- played a central role in elevating him to Harris' running mate this summer. But since he joined the ticket, he's appeared less frequently on the cable news circuit, drawing criticism from fellow Democrats for the campaign being too cautious. ... But even as some Democrats had hoped Walz, a former teacher who has strong ties to labor, could help Harris connect with blue-collar voters, that hasn't necessarily worked. Notably, the International Association of Fire Fighters declined to endorse Harris or Trump earlier this month, a snub for the Harris campaign that came as a surprise to her staffers. It may also be a challenging mission to bring over more men to Harris' campaign, which has seen much of its strength built off of its popularity with female voters.The Democrats' problems with attracting men are so deep that they dispatched Noted Shallowly-Closeted Homosexual Barack Obama to Pennsylvania to gin up votes among black men:
Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (460) | Trackbacks (Suck)
CBS "News" Continues Hiding the Real Video of Kamala Harris' Word-Salad Nonsense Answers, and Also Refuses to Make a Transcript of Her Real Words Available, Too
A "news" organization is attempting to hide the actual news of their own interview.
Orwell laughs.Of course, of course. Why should the Guardians of Truth explain their deceptions to the lower order?
CBS News remained mum Wednesday amid mounting pressure to release the full transcript of Kamala Harris' interview with "60 Minutes" -- even as a former correspondent said there's "precedent" for the network doing so when it came to Donald Trump. Ex-CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge -- who was laid off earlier this year as she investigated the Hunter Biden laptop scandal -- said the network released the full, unedited transcript of her interview with Trump when he was president in 2020. The Republican presidential candidate has demanded CBS News publish the full interview with Harris after accusations that the Tiffany Network edited her "word salad" answers during the sit-down with Bill Whitaker. "As Trump campaign calls on @60Minutes to release 'full, unedited transcript' of Kamala Harris interview ... There is precedent," Herridge posted on X on Wednesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris granted an interview to CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired on Monday night. 5
"When I interviewed then President Trump in July 2020. @CBSNews we posted the interview transcript. This is more complete and NOT the same as a transcript of the edited TV report." The award-winning journalist provided the link to the unedited interview on CBS News in which she grilled Trump on hot-topic issues like the COVID vaccine. "It's about transparency and standing behind the integrity of the final edit," Herridge said. A source close to the network said Herridge had pushed for the publication of her full transcript at the time and that it was a "special case." CBS News declined to comment.
If you missed this story, they deleted her real answer -- which was another rambling, incoherent word-salad answer -- with something that sounded more confident and coherent, but which was offered as an answer to a different question.
A spokesperson also did not reply to repeated calls and emails from The Post about whether the network would release the unedited "60 Minutes" transcript. The controversy continued to swirl after a truncated version of the Democratic presidential candidate's response to a question from Whitaker about Israel was broadcast on the "60 Minutes" episode on Monday. Harris' reply stood in contrast to her longer, stammering answer that was aired as a promo for the interview on "Face the Nation" on Sunday morning.
Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (283) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Polls Are For Strippers: An Explanation
Polling has several innate problems that exacerbate when funded by people with agendas and who don't have the amount of money to do it right. Polling is expensive. Response rates on phone calls for polling are minute. Something like 1 in 10 calls (according to a research paper, it's actually just under that at 9%) gets a response that a firm can actually use. So, to get a 1,000 sample, you have to call about 10,000 numbers. That's a lot of time if you're using real people to make the calls (reportedly the more accurate way to do it). It requires a lot of resources, and that gets expensive. Your fly-by-night polling firms, are they investing in their efforts at that level? The news organizations that pay for polling, the same ones seeing contractions at even the highest "talent" levels, are they investing at that level? Most likely not.
And then you get to the question of incentives: What incentive is there for polling firms to "try and get it right?"
"Well," you say, "that's obvious. You're dumb TJM for not figuring this out. If they're not accurate, then no one will believe them in the future."
That's a great idea, but it doesn't actually hold up with reality. Let's take Quinnipac as a case study. In 2016, their final poll of the presidential race was Clinton 50, Trump 44. The race ended 48 to 46. In 2020, their final poll was Biden 50, Trump 39. The final result was 51 to 47. Their pattern over the last two cycles is to be within a reasonable (we'll get to that) distance of the Democrat number and to regularly (sometimes vastly) underestimating Trump's support. They're not very accurate. They're not very good. What is the generalized opinion of the firm? Well, 538 calls them the 17th most accurate pollster and rates them 2.8/3 stars. How? Quinnipac is terrible.
I'm not interested in seeing what esoteric reasons 538 rates Quinnipac so highly, but it's obvious that them regularly getting things wrong isn't actually a concern for its reputation. Getting it wrong doesn't hurt them. So, what incentive is there in being right?
One of the most famous statisticians of the 20th Century, George Box, had a saying that I've known since high school (my dad is a world famous statistician himself who has won the Shewhart Medal, though his area is industrial engineering and experimental design). That saying is, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful." I say this: polling, as it currently exists in the American political space, is not useful.
Polling has several innate problems that exacerbate when funded by people with agendas and who don't have the amount of money to do it right. Polling is expensive. Response rates on phone calls for polling are minute. Something like 1 in 10 calls (according to a research paper, it's actually just under that at 9%) gets a response that a firm can actually use. So, to get a 1,000 sample, you have to call about 10,000 numbers. That's a lot of time if you're using real people to make the calls (reportedly the more accurate way to do it). It requires a lot of resources, and that gets expensive. Your fly-by-night polling firms, are they investing in their efforts at that level? The news organizations that pay for polling, the same ones seeing contractions at even the highest "talent" levels, are they investing at that level? Most likely not.
And then you get to the question of incentives: What incentive is there for polling firms to "try and get it right?"
"Well," you say, "that's obvious. You're dumb TJM for not figuring this out. If they're not accurate, then no one will believe them in the future."
That's a great idea, but it doesn't actually hold up with reality. Let's take Quinnipac as a case study. In 2016, their final poll of the presidential race was Clinton 50, Trump 44. The race ended 48 to 46. In 2020, their final poll was Biden 50, Trump 39. The final result was 51 to 47. Their pattern over the last two cycles is to be within a reasonable (we'll get to that) distance of the Democrat number and to regularly (sometimes vastly) underestimating Trump's support. They're not very accurate. They're not very good. What is the generalized opinion of the firm? Well, 538 calls them the 17th most accurate pollster and rates them 2.8/3 stars. How? Quinnipac is terrible.
I'm not interested in seeing what esoteric reasons 538 rates Quinnipac so highly, but it's obvious that them regularly getting things wrong isn't actually a concern for its reputation. Getting it wrong doesn't hurt them. So, what incentive is there in being right?
Posted by: TheJamesMadison at 12:07 PM | Comments (331) | Trackbacks (Suck)
THE MORNING RANT: After Moving All-Star Game from Charlotte in Solidarity with LGBTQ, NBA Opens 2024 Season in Abu Dhabi, where Homosexuality is a Crime
The new NBA season kicked off with an exhibition game last week in the United Arab Emirates.
“Celtics beat the Nuggets 107-103 in the NBA’s preseason opener at Abu Dhabi” [AP – 10/04/2024] Like many sports leagues, the NBA seeks to increase its revenue by expanding its global following. For the UAE, being awarded the NBA season opener affirms the country’s stature and importance. Of note, homosexuality is a crime in the United Arab Emirates, with allowable punishment including the death penalty. Transgender cross-dressing is also a crime. Also of note, the NBA has established the precedent that it either condones or condemns a location’s criminal code regarding sexual behaviors by how the league awards – or revokes - featured exhibition games. By awarding the season-opening exhibition game to Abu Dhabi, the NBA has endorsed the UAE’s brutal criminalization of LGBTQ behavior. The NBA’s apparent endorsement of criminalizing homosexuality in the Arab world would seem puzzling, because just a few years ago, the NBA revoked the NBA All-Star game from the city of Charlotte after the North Carolina legislature passed legislation banning biological men from entering women’s restrooms and locker rooms. While it may be entirely consistent for the NBA to oppose homosexuality while still endorsing the right of men to terrorize women in restrooms and changing facilities, the reason given by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver for yanking the All-Star Game from Charlotte was that it discriminated against LGBTQ people. “NBA moving 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte due to anti-LGBT bill” [USA Today – 7/21/2016]In an unprecedented and monumental decision, the NBA will move the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, N.C. to another state because of North Carolina’s controversial anti-LGBT law called House Bill 2. “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the league said in a statement.What was “the climate” of House Bill 2? This is from a 2016 article at The Federalist titled The Truth About North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill:
This section of HB2 simply and justly states that persons must use the bathroom and locker room that identifies with the gender on their birth certificates. It also states that municipalities requiring different sexes to share public accommodations is inconsistent with North Carolina’s law and constitution.How hateful! This law prohibited a man in North Carolina from strolling into a women’s restroom and conscripting unsuspecting women into his fetish. Meanwhile in the UAE, this is from the Human Dignity Trust’s website:
Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (268) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Mid-Morning Art Thread
Pieter Claesz
Pieter Claesz
Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (358) | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Morning Report — 10/11/24
So there are a few things that jump right out at me that do not exactly fill me with strength and confidence about what we can expect come the day after Election Day if not the days leading up to it. It is eminently clear that we have a junta in power and a Deep State bureaucracy that will do anything to hold on to and increase its grip on absolute power. The bungled response to two back to back hurricanes, on top of the East Palestine toxic train derailment shows how much the government cares for people whom it views as political enemies. The sheer incompetence of the Maui wildfire response might be to clear land and then give it away to friends of the party like Oprah for pennies on the dollar as a reward for stellar service to the cause. Let's start off with this rather disturbing nugget:
This is the same CIA that is part an parcel of the Deep State bureaucracy that does not want Donald Trump back in office under any circumstances.
Moving on to the next and not necessarily unrelated item on the agenda, should the polling, tea leaves and vibes indeed point to a Trump victory as well as control of the House and Senate, well look what we have here: Can you say INSURRECTION?
These are the same revolting, shrieking criminal coprolites who screamed from the rooftops that the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections were illegitimate. If Trump please dear God make it so wins come November, there is no way he will be allowed to take a seat behind the Resolute Desk. And should actual protests occur . . . Now get ready for this story:
So there are a few things that jump right out at me that do not exactly fill me with strength and confidence about what we can expect come the day after Election Day if not the days leading up to it. It is eminently clear that we have a junta in power and a Deep State bureaucracy that will do anything to hold on to and increase its grip on absolute power. The bungled response to two back to back hurricanes, on top of the East Palestine toxic train derailment shows how much the government cares for people whom it views as political enemies. The sheer incompetence of the Maui wildfire response might be to clear land and then give it away to friends of the party like Oprah for pennies on the dollar as a reward for stellar service to the cause. Let's start off with this rather disturbing nugget:
The Afghan national who was arrested Monday for allegedly plotting an Election Day terrorist attack worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan, NBC News reported citing sources familiar with the matter.Gee, who was occupying the White House back then. And how was it that these thousands of Afghanis suddenly were flooding into the country? Oh yeah, the Biden Junta decided it was a great idea to just bug out of the country and declare the war over while leaving behind billions of dollars worth of our weapons in the hands of Islamic barbarians to use to wage Jihad all over the world. Is this what Mrs. Emhoff means when she says she's bringing joy to America? Green cards for the Taliban! Get 'em while their hot!
Twenty-seven-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi was allegedly planning a “violent attack in the United States in the name of and on behalf of ISIS, which was planned for Election Day,” according to the criminal complaint filed against him. While the CIA has not publicly commented on the revelation, “sources familiar with [Tawhedi’s] work in Afghanistan say he would have had minimal interaction with Americans and he was not a CIA informant or a member of the U.S.-trained and armed paramilitary force known as ‘Zero Units,'” according to NBC News. . . Tawhedi entered the United States on Sept. 9, 2021 on “a special immigrant visa and is currently on parole status pending adjudication of his immigration proceedings,” the complaint states. Tawhedi was residing in Oklahoma. NBC News reports that “two U.S. officials familiar with the matter [say] the charging document is incorrect, and that Tawhedi entered the U.S. on what’s known as humanitarian parole. Officials say humanitarian parole generally entails far less screening than a Special Immigrant Visa.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is promising to provide tens of thousands of Afghan nationals brought to the United States often without in-person screenings, with green cards. The move would come even as an accused Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist was able to get resettled in Oklahoma from Afghanistan as part of Harris and President Joe Biden’s massive Afghan resettlement operation.But aside from this madness is the fact that this individual was and for all we know still may be a CIA asset.
In September 2021, the Biden-Harris junta began resettling nearly 100,000 Afghan nationals across American communities. Among those resettled was 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was arrested in Oklahoma this month after allegedly plotting an ISIS terrorist attack on American citizens on Election Day.
This is the same CIA that is part an parcel of the Deep State bureaucracy that does not want Donald Trump back in office under any circumstances.
Now, however, it has come to light that he worked for the CIA, which casts doubt upon every other aspect of this story. . . What’s the big deal? He was just a security guard, right? That hardly means that he was the Afghan version of Agent 007. Sure, but when the CIA is involved, it’s impossible to dismiss the suspicion that there is more going on here than meets the eye. The agency, like all other intelligence agencies around the world, is not exactly open and honest about who exactly works for it and what they actually do. . . Sometimes it seems as if we can trust absolutely nothing that our governing authorities and the establishment media tell us. That may (or may not) be a wild exaggeration, but those in positions of public trust have no one but themselves to blame for the widespread and increasing suspicion. They’ve been discovered to be dishonest about so very much (remember all the falsehoods that have been attached to Donald Trump: Russian collusion, “insurrection,” rape, fraud, and so very many others) that it’s hard to assume that they’re being aboveboard and honest about literally anything. . . . . . There is, after all, no good way to spin this. Tawhedi could be a CIA agent and his Election Day jihad plot is fake, perhaps fabricated in order to make Americans afraid to head to the polls and more accepting of mail-in ballots, which can be so easily used to commit election fraud. Alternatively, Tawhedi is a bona fide jihadi who worked as a security guard for the CIA, indicating that the vaunted intelligence agency is incapable of recognizing jihadis even when they’re standing at their own gates.Now, put all of the above in context to two failed assassination attempts on Trump to which we still don't really know all of the facts on the identities and backgrounds of the shooters and, given the nature of who we are dealing with likely never will. As well as the desperation to keep Trump and anyone who thinks and feels as he does out of power at any cost.
Moving on to the next and not necessarily unrelated item on the agenda, should the polling, tea leaves and vibes indeed point to a Trump victory as well as control of the House and Senate, well look what we have here: Can you say INSURRECTION?
Top House Democrats won’t say for certain if they will certify the results of the 2024 presidential election if former President Donald Trump beats Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a new report. Some of these members, including those who objected to Trump electors in 2017, signaled to Axios that Trump may cause issues with the vote that would give them pause. Democrats would certify a Trump victory “assuming everything goes the way we expect it to,” said Jim McGovern (D-MA), the ranking member of the Rules Committee “We have to see how it all happens,” McGovern said. “My expectation is that we would.”
. . . Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who served on the former January 6 panel, suggested Trump may resort to “manipulating” counts in some states.
These are the same revolting, shrieking criminal coprolites who screamed from the rooftops that the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections were illegitimate. If Trump please dear God make it so wins come November, there is no way he will be allowed to take a seat behind the Resolute Desk. And should actual protests occur . . . Now get ready for this story:
More in the long train of abuses and usurpations…. Kathleen Hicks is the Deputy Secretary of Defense, or Lloyd Austin’s right-hand gal, and on September 27, the agency issued a new directive, approved by Hicks, that authorized U.S. military personnel to use “lethal force” when “assisting” local law enforcement in its operations.So, if Trump wins, the paramilitary forces come out and are assisted by the army to move against him and We the People. If he loses or it's stolen yet again, ditto should anyone be dumb enough to march in protest on D.C. or even stand on a soapbox in a public park, lest they too get roasted alive like a house cat or a duck and eaten by Haitians. What a country. It sure ain't America. Have a good weekend, and prayers for all still affected by Helene and Milton.
Hopefully your local police chief isn’t corrupt, and your sheriff isn’t a George Soros purchase! Sean Miller at InfoWars reported that the DoD directive, titled “DOD INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE-RELATED ACTIVITIES AND DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE COMPONENT ASSISTANCE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES AND OTHER CIVIL AUTHORITIES”, granted extensive new powers to the federal government, explained below: New provisions within the Directive expand the circumstances under which the DoD can assist law enforcement, including the use of lethal force, although assassinations are forbidden. GreenMed Info reported that the 2016 version of the directive did not mention ‘lethal force’ but rather centered around intelligence gathering.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- More in the long train of abuses and usurpations….
DOD’s Kathleen Hicks issues new directive authorizing military to use ‘lethal force’ when assisting local law enforcement in its operations
- David Harsanyi: In 1970, safety-net funding accounted for a significant share of income in fewer than 1% of all counties in the country. By 2000, 10% of counties were getting a significant share of their income from federal and state safety-net and social programs. Today? More than half of all US counties draw at least a quarter of their income from government aid.
Entitlements are spiraling us into a bipartisan spending suicide pact
Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 06:43 AM | Comments (361) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Daily Tech News 11 October 2024
Top Story
- Terrorist supporters have claimed responsibility for the DDOS and hack of the Internet Archive. (Gizmodo)
Maybe it's true. Maybe they're lying. There are many powerful groups that would love to scrub the internet's memory forever.
But they're publicly boasting of this on Twitter from a verified account, so they've made themselves easy targets for law enforcement.
- The core archive is unaffected. (Twitter)
The site is down temporarily while the staff scrub the front-end servers and upgrade security, but it will be back.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (113) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 10, 2024
An ONT For All Seasons
Hello everybody! Welcome to Thursday's ONT. Let's open with words of wisdom from 1947:
Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (429) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Rescue Me Cafe
Waves hitting the temple at Tanar Lot, Bali, by Ryan Downie
Biker stops to save kitten stuck in the middle of the road. A poor and beautiful dog was left tied to a fence in the driving rain as people fled their homes in Florida. That cute little pup has been saved. People are saying whoever left the dog are monsters. I watch Rocky Kanaka on YouTube, and he says we shouldn't assume the worst of dog-abandoners. If you lose your home, your dog becomes, well, difficult to care for. It could be that the people who abandoned this dog had no car but hitched a ride with neighbors, and the dog got sick or started peeing or something and the neighbors told them "either you put the dog out of the car, or you can get out." I know that doesn't make it much better. The good news is that this good boy is now dry and safe. Dog is aggressive at dropping hints. Cats compete, a little dangerously, to pass each other on a beam. Elephants never forget. Poor little turtle wants to make frenz with a cat but the cat isn't interested. Kitten meets kit.
Waves hitting the temple at Tanar Lot, Bali, by Ryan Downie
Biker stops to save kitten stuck in the middle of the road. A poor and beautiful dog was left tied to a fence in the driving rain as people fled their homes in Florida. That cute little pup has been saved. People are saying whoever left the dog are monsters. I watch Rocky Kanaka on YouTube, and he says we shouldn't assume the worst of dog-abandoners. If you lose your home, your dog becomes, well, difficult to care for. It could be that the people who abandoned this dog had no car but hitched a ride with neighbors, and the dog got sick or started peeing or something and the neighbors told them "either you put the dog out of the car, or you can get out." I know that doesn't make it much better. The good news is that this good boy is now dry and safe. Dog is aggressive at dropping hints. Cats compete, a little dangerously, to pass each other on a beam. Elephants never forget. Poor little turtle wants to make frenz with a cat but the cat isn't interested. Kitten meets kit.
Posted by: Ace at 07:33 PM | Comments (227) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Ron DeSantis' Emergency Response Efforts are Proceeding Crisply While FEMA is Short-Staffed Due to Providing "Services" For Illegal Aliens at Harris and Biden's Dissolved Border
A tree uprooted by Hurricane Helene (not Milton)
Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm. We're not allowed to say that, though: Kamala, America's Drunken, Embarassing Side-Piece, wants to play president and will go on CNN to say that reporting the actual strength of the storm is "misinformation" because we're all required to lie to amp up the fear and pretend that Kamala Harris is "really showing executive competency." It wasn't as bad as Experts predicted. Does that mean Global Warming is a lie? They said the power of the storm proved global warming; does the relative weakness of the storm prove global warming is fake? Just wondering.
JusttheNews reports that FEMA is incompetent under the Harris-Biden Regime because Harris and Biden are diverting FEMA workers to... help build shelters for illegal aliens streaming across the border. And performing "Covid funerals." What?
A tree uprooted by Hurricane Helene (not Milton)
Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm. We're not allowed to say that, though: Kamala, America's Drunken, Embarassing Side-Piece, wants to play president and will go on CNN to say that reporting the actual strength of the storm is "misinformation" because we're all required to lie to amp up the fear and pretend that Kamala Harris is "really showing executive competency." It wasn't as bad as Experts predicted. Does that mean Global Warming is a lie? They said the power of the storm proved global warming; does the relative weakness of the storm prove global warming is fake? Just wondering.
Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida late Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm with winds of 120 mph. Around 3.2 million people in Florida are without power Thursday afternoon as the storm has devastated Florida's coast. Milton is currently a Category 1 storm and has moved off the coast, bringing destructive winds, flooding rains and storm surge in its wake. More than 10 inches of rain has fallen so far in some parts of Florida and an additional 8 to 12 inches of rain is possible in many areas. St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson also confirmed to Fox Weather that there have been 17 tornadoes along with several fatalities in his county, with "a rescue mission ongoing, and hundreds of homes destroyed." At least 10 fatalities have been confirmed, with more expected
He pre-deployed 50,000 linesmen so power lines are going back up.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave an update on Hurricane Milton Thursday afternoon after it made landfall the night before as a Category 3 Storm. By Thursday afternoon, the governor said, at least 340 individuals and 49 pets had been rescued. Florida National Guard, Florida law enforcement, and urban search and rescue teams were continuing to work through the day. Hundreds of rescuers were engaged in more than 125 missions in 26 counties. "The northern side of the storm had a lot of precipitation. They were just getting water dumped on them. So, whereas [Hurricane] Helene created a lot of storm surge in that part of the state, this one didn't do that here, but it create inland flooding," DeSantis said. Around 4 million were left without power. As of the 3 p.m. update, around 880,000 had been restored, with 3.2 million accounts still without power.
He has a warning for Kamala voters -- I mean, "looters."
DeSantis said that while Hurricane Milton did inflict damage, "I think in some areas that in terms of what was being predicted, some of the worst case scenarios did not come to pass, certainly in terms of some of the storm surge people were predicting."
He then went on to own the relentless propgandists of the press, who kept demanding he tell them that global warming is real and will kill us all.
Gov. DeSantis warned people against taking advantage of a dire situation. "I'm warning you, don't do that. If you loot, you will be held accountable. If you're doing things that violate the law, if you're gonna try to take advantage of vulnerable people, we're going to throw the book at you," DeSantis said.
At a press conference on Thursday, DeSantis was asked whether "global warming" impacted the hurricane's intensity after Milton spawned several tornadoes that wreaked havoc in the Sunshine State. DeSantis rejected the premise that Milton was worse than previous hurricanes, stating, "I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history." Compared to previous storms, Milton had a barometric pressure of about 950 millibars when it made landfall, the governor said. "I think if you go back to 1851, there's probably been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure -- so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is." The governor noted that 17 hurricanes stronger than Milton made landfall in Florida prior to 1960 and that the strongest hurricane on record since the 1850s was the Labor Day hurricane, which occurred in 1935 and had a barometric pressure of 892 millibars. The most deadly hurricane in Florida history happened in 1928, he added. "I just think people should put this in perspective there. They tried to take different things that happened with tropical weather and act like it's something -- there's nothing new under the sun," DeSantis said. "I think what's changed is we've got 23 million people. A storm is likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago. And so the potential for that damage has grown, but what's also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets."Damn.
JusttheNews reports that FEMA is incompetent under the Harris-Biden Regime because Harris and Biden are diverting FEMA workers to... help build shelters for illegal aliens streaming across the border. And performing "Covid funerals." What?
On the eve of Hurricane Milton's landfall on a disaster-weary Florida, FEMA, the nation's disaster relief agency reported a stark shortage of frontline workers available to be deployed: just 8% of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's vaunted Incident Management personnel were still available for deployment.
The stunning declaration in Wednesday's Daily Operations Briefing exposed the longtime impact of FEMA's expanding work on unrelated missions like COVID funerals and illegal immigrant services, a crisis created by a worker shortage, a workforce morale issue and the reality of burnout from a increasingly frenetic natural disaster pace. Just seven months earlier, the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, warned that FEMA was in an increasingly weak position to handle multiple major crises at once. "Increasingly complex and severe natural disasters coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic and responsibilities at the southern border have created an unprecedented demand for FEMA's disaster workforce," the GAO concluded. ... Wednesday's situation report showed FEMA had most of its IM (incident management) resources deployed in the region struck by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago or pre-positioned in Florida for Milton. But the 8% in reserves -- only 90 workers -- would be be hard pressed if another disaster like an earthquake or wildfire broke out in the ensuing days. "I think we plan for multiple events. We've done this before we are prepared for this," she added. Several factors contribute to the increasing strain on the workforce of the nation's premier disaster relief agency related to the agency's expanding roles and responsibilities outside of traditional disaster relief. The GAO report specifically highlighted the impacts of workforce burnout from increased responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic response and deployments to the U.S. southern border.
FEMA did not respond to additional questions from Just the News about the number of FEMA employees or contractors deployed to the southern border or handling other immigration-related programs. Recently, Congress has continued to fund FEMA programs for feeding and sheltering illegal immigrants released into the country awaiting court dates at a time when the agency is running short of disaster relief funds. The agency has come under additional scrutiny by Republicans for hiccups in its response to severe flooding in the southeast last month, Just the News reported this week. White House spokeswoman Karine-Jean Pierre took the lead in trying to suggest it was a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that FEMA was using its resources to aid illegal aliens. Republicans came back with receipts, showing that FEMA had routed $640.9 million in grants to nonprofits aiding immigrants, many of whom have crossed into the U.S. illegally. ... Last week, a group of Republican Senators who did not support the budget deal wrote to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, expressing concern that its continued "entanglement" with immigration threatens readiness. "FEMA's continued entanglement in DHS's efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission," GOP Senators James Lankford, Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, and Ron Jonson wrote to Biden last week. "Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission."
Posted by: Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (218) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Quick Hits
A couple of days ago, Trump announced a NYC rally to be held in Madison Square Garden. A New York State Senator is using his political might to block Trump from speaking (in a safe environment) in New York City. I guess he wants him outdoors, with lots and lots of clear lines of sight for assassins:
Arab racist Mehdi Hassan is arguing with black racist Brianha Joy-Grey about who hates white people and Jews more and who is higher on the progressive Attention Stack.
A couple of days ago, Trump announced a NYC rally to be held in Madison Square Garden. A New York State Senator is using his political might to block Trump from speaking (in a safe environment) in New York City. I guess he wants him outdoors, with lots and lots of clear lines of sight for assassins:
You're worried about violence? You're trying to create a good shooting lane for an assassin. Walz, the Knucklehead, sometimes deals in crude Asian stereotypes but it's just because he's got so much "passion." Andrew Stiles (not completely seriously):
Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal
@bradhoylman Let's be clear. Allowing Trump to hold an event at MSG is equivalent to the infamous Nazis rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939 . . . . This is a disastrous decision by Madison Square Garden that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence. For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump rally
He subheds his piece: #StopAsianHate. Do Better, Chinese agent-in-place. #DoBetter. Hillary Clinton's latest "book" bombed harder than Jake Tapper's.
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, the serial fabulist running for vice president on the Democratic ticket, has a bigoted code name for his running mate Kamala Harris. During a friendly interview with Democratic fundraiser and former comedian Jimmy Kimmel on Monday, the VP nominee confessed that Harris was listed as "My Dry Cleaner" in his phone contacts. "They told me to come up with something, and that was all I could think of," Walz chuckled. In fact, there is nothing funny about misogyny and racism. Walz's "dry cleaner" code name is problematic for several reasons. Harris is running to be the first female president of the United States, but Walz's word choice suggests that women are better suited for domestic tasks such as doing laundry or dropping off their husband's work clothes at the dry cleaner. Hey, Tim, the 1950s called; they want their small-minded gender stereotypes back, bigot. Harris would also be the first Asian-American president in history. Viewed in this context, it is reasonable to conclude that Walz is vehemently biased toward non-white ethnic groups. The Asian dry cleaner is a familiar trope that only a passionate racist would joke about on national television. This might explain Walz's bizarre affinity for communist China. A devoted white supremacist with low self-esteem would presumably enjoy surrounding himself with members of an inferior race. A racist misogynist would presumably view Asian women as subservient sex objects.
Diminishing Returns: Hillary Clinton's Second Angsty Screed About 2016 Loss Sells Way Fewer Copies Than the FirstOh boy you know I do! That review is here.
Maybe now she'll finally go away (or at least accept the fact that no one cares)
Simon & Schuster ...
Hillary has just written another memoir about how unfair it was that she lost to Donald Trump and why you still owe her an apology for being right about everything. Released last month, Something Lost, Something Gained: Lessons on Life, Love, and Liberty is a tedious slog through familiar grievances and blatant lies about her "thicker skin" and "stiffer spine." She lauds herself as "the first woman to win a presidential primary, the nomination of a major party, and the national popular vote." She remembers the good times when she "flew on Air Force One, dined with kings and queens, and was constantly surrounded by armed guards." She refuses to go away or accept the fact that no one cares. You probably won't be surprised to learn that sales of her second angsty screed about losing the 2016 election are much lower this time around. Something Lost, Something Gained sold just 27,000 copies in its first week, according to an industry source. That's less than 20 percent of her "record-breaking" haul during the Trump administration, when trauma-brained MSNBC viewers were particularly ravenous for #Resistance slop. That's still an alarming number of copies--more than eight times the week-one sales for Extremely Online (2023), the fawning history of teen influencers by disgraced reporter Taylor Lorenz. But the trend line is promising. Read our review of Hillary's new book if you'd like to know the unlikely name she's given her "postmenopausal belly," and other sad facts.
Oh I won't. The Free Beacon has unmasked another woke DEI hire whose career, such as it is, is built on white guilt and massive plagiarism.
Hillary Clinton isn't going anywhere. Why would she? She was right. She tried to warn us. She was treated so unfairly. She deserved it; we betrayed her. We were sexist. We were duped. She was robbed. Putin, Comey, Facebook, Electoral College. The goddamned voters, man. Sorry? She's not sorry. She's still waiting for an apology from you. From all of us.
...
"These days, I find myself thinking mostly about the future," Hillary bluffs as she relitigates old grievances. "Time and so many battles won and lost have given me a thicker skin and a stiffer spine." How she really feels is revealed in the text. Her "pang of vindication" when Trump was convicted of paying hush money to a porn star. "A fraud was committed against the American people, against all of us," she bristles. "I would have won. ... Even now, just thinking about that moment makes fury well up in my chest." She's owed an apology, dammit, even if we don't deserve her forgiveness just yet. ... When she's not moping about being right, Hillary tries to convince us she doesn't spend all her time obsessing about politics. That she's fun! You can imagine how persuasive this is. Several chapters recount good times hanging out with old friends who know her as "Big Girl," and her "postmenopausal belly" as "Beulah." (Don't ask.)
The dean of Michigan State University's College of Education, Jerlando Jackson, plagiarized extensively over the course of his career, according to a complaint filed with the university on Thursday, lifting text without attribution and raising questions about his fitness to lead one of the top teacher training programs in the country. The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson's papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages. It adds to the allegations of research misconduct already facing the embattled dean, who was a coauthor on several papers implicated in complaints against diversity officials earlier this year, including Harvard University's chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston. "Jackson has failed all ordinary standards of academic honesty," said Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars and a former provost at Boston University, where he helped lead plagiarism investigations of faculty and alumni. "As long as he remains as a dean, the university has no legitimate basis to hold students and faculty to basic standards of intellectual integrity." Michigan State University defines plagiarism as "copying another person's text or ideas and passing the copied material as your own." And Jackson--who can expel students for "academic misconduct," per the university's handbook--has a decades-long record of doing just that. ...
The allegations against Jackson come as teachers are confronting a wave of AI-generated plagiarism in student writing. Demand for AI detection tools has surged since the release of ChatGPT, according to data from the Center for Democracy and Technology, jumping by 30 percentage points in just one year and corresponding to an increase in student discipline. That context makes the allegations all the more galling, said Steve McGuire, a fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, given that graduates of Jackson's program will inherit a plagiarism crisis with no precedent in modern memory. "It makes a mockery of the whole enterprise of education to have someone who appears to be a serial plagiarist running a school of education, especially in an age in which teachers and professors are increasingly encountering extensive academic dishonesty facilitated by the rise of artificial intelligence," McGuire wrote in an email. "How can educators combat this very real crisis if students can point to academic leaders and accuse them of plagiarism too?" Jackson and Michigan State University did not respond to requests for comment.
Posted by: Ace at 05:28 PM | Comments (285) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Folie a DUH: Studio Scrambling to Figure Out Why a Movie That Was an Undisguised "F*** You" to Its Fans Failed to Find an Audience
The article notes that the two men put in charge of Warner Bros. DC universe, James Gunn and Peter Saffron, did not attend the premiere for this bomb. Because no one wants to be found near a corpse.
Gunn has since been silent about the movie. He doesn't want it tarnishing his own brand.
He doesn't have access to Twitter when he's hanging around waiting for the crew to finish setting the lights? No, he's hiding because he doesn't want the radiation from this bomb poisoning him.
You know who's probably putting this out to the media? James Gunn. He wants it to be very clear that he had nothing to do with this, and that, while he did offer "notes" to Phillips, Phillips gave him the finger. So you can't blame Gunn's "notes."
Now Warner Bros.' higher-ups go to the press to say "he ignored us, too!" Zaslav reportedly asked Phillips to reduce the budget by filming in London, which is cheaper, and the UK provides a tax incentive for filming there. He told Zaslev to get bent. There would be no reducing the hefty price tag. (Phillips' $20 million salary was a part of that price tag, of course.) The studio also objected to debuting the film at the Venice Film Festival. Note that that was about 45 days before the premiere, so that gave bad reviews plenty of time to set in with the public. Phillips insisted on a Venice debut, and yes, the reviews were bad and ending of the film leaked. Phillips refused test screenings, claiming he didn't want the ending to leak. But it leaked after Venice. (It's a divisive ending. And the original version was worse.) Those test screenings could have told him what the public objected to in the film, but he was too high on his own supply and wouldn't compromise his artistic vision.
Um, a would-be blockbuster opening in 4,000 theaters isn't built to allow audience to discover it in their own time. It's made to make $200 million opening weekend.
Why doesn't anyone in Hollywood understand this (except for this one source)? This Variety article is written by a goof who was one of the cringing fearful shitlibs worried the movie would "incite incels," but even he understands that attacking your own audience is bad business.
Here's a quick EduGraphic. The best point is the first one: Joachin Phoenix reportedly awoke from a dream (which one might imagine was in an altered state) and said he had the greatest idea for a sequel -- it should be a musical!
Todd Phillips, who never wanted to make this movie but changed his mind when they offered him $20 million, supposedly loved the idea. Or, more likely, he just couldn't be bothered enough to care and so he said "Sure let's do what this idiot just said."Inside the 'Joker: Folie a Deux' Debacle: Todd Phillips 'Wanted Nothing to Do' With DC on the $200 Million Misfire
The article notes that the two men put in charge of Warner Bros. DC universe, James Gunn and Peter Saffron, did not attend the premiere for this bomb. Because no one wants to be found near a corpse.
Insiders say the duo's glaring absence for a film that is based on one of the biggest draws in the DC canon underscores a dysfunctional dynamic that played out behind the scenes on the ill-fated Warner Bros. musical. Todd Phillips "wanted nothing to do with DC" during the making of the film, says one agent familiar with the director's unique carve-out, which allowed him to bypass any oversight from the brand's gatekeepers. Although Gunn has publicly supported the film on social media, Phillips has distanced himself from DC. As the animated title-card sequence unspooled inside the iconic Hollywood cinema in the opening minutes, it became apparent that Phillips had just given DC the middle finger. There was no DC Studios logo.
Gunn has since been silent about the movie. He doesn't want it tarnishing his own brand.
"If the first movie was about some down-on-his-luck, mentally ill guy in a downtrodden city, it makes maybe $150 [million] worldwide. Not a billion," says a source familiar with the internal awkwardness. "People showed up because that guy was Joker." (A DC spokesperson downplays any tensions and says Gunn was busy directing the Max series "Peacemaker" in Atlanta, which had lost a day of production due to Hurricane Helene, while Safran was sick. A Warners spokesperson notes that a DC logo appears at the end of the "Joker" sequel. Phillips declined to comment for this story.)
He doesn't have access to Twitter when he's hanging around waiting for the crew to finish setting the lights? No, he's hiding because he doesn't want the radiation from this bomb poisoning him.
Now that the dust has settled on the sequel's disastrous opening weekend, plenty of soul-searching is taking place on the Burbank lot. The overarching question being asked is: Why spend $200 million to make -- and nearly $100 million to market -- a tentpole that ignores the DC fanbase? And "ignores" may be putting it mildly. As a Rolling Stone review of the film succinctly put it: "'Joker: Folie a Deux' Has a Message for Fans: Go F-ck Yourselves." Alas, the fanboys and fangirls stayed home, resulting in a shocking $37.7 million domestic opening for Phillips' follow-up to his 2019 "Joker," an enormous success that cost just $60 million and earned $1.1 billion. Such disregard for the base has brand repercussions. ... The movie began production in December 2022, two months after Gunn and Safran took control of DC, and many expected the duo to provide notes and feedback on the R-rated musical, especially given the capital outlay involved. But Phillips balked and would only liaise with De Luca and Abdy.
You know who's probably putting this out to the media? James Gunn. He wants it to be very clear that he had nothing to do with this, and that, while he did offer "notes" to Phillips, Phillips gave him the finger. So you can't blame Gunn's "notes."
And he has done little to dispel the appearance of friction, even though Gunn and Safran were on hand for the first director's cut screening for the studio....
Now Warner Bros.' higher-ups go to the press to say "he ignored us, too!" Zaslav reportedly asked Phillips to reduce the budget by filming in London, which is cheaper, and the UK provides a tax incentive for filming there. He told Zaslev to get bent. There would be no reducing the hefty price tag. (Phillips' $20 million salary was a part of that price tag, of course.) The studio also objected to debuting the film at the Venice Film Festival. Note that that was about 45 days before the premiere, so that gave bad reviews plenty of time to set in with the public. Phillips insisted on a Venice debut, and yes, the reviews were bad and ending of the film leaked. Phillips refused test screenings, claiming he didn't want the ending to leak. But it leaked after Venice. (It's a divisive ending. And the original version was worse.) Those test screenings could have told him what the public objected to in the film, but he was too high on his own supply and wouldn't compromise his artistic vision.
Other battles of will between Phillips and Warners ensued. Phillips refused to test screen "Joker 2." So its premiere in Venice marked the first time an audience saw it. The critics rejected it, and the film tallied a disastrous 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes well before earning a dismal "D" CinemaScore. To put that grade into context, the much reviled "Madame Web" landed a "C+" earlier this year. (A Warners spokesperson says, "Given the film contains spoilers, the studio did not want to unnecessarily divulge plot points too early to test audiences, but rather, allow moviegoers to discover the film in their own time.")
Um, a would-be blockbuster opening in 4,000 theaters isn't built to allow audience to discover it in their own time. It's made to make $200 million opening weekend.
... "No one could get through to Todd," says one source directly involved with the film. "And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don't listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you're going to fail."
Why doesn't anyone in Hollywood understand this (except for this one source)? This Variety article is written by a goof who was one of the cringing fearful shitlibs worried the movie would "incite incels," but even he understands that attacking your own audience is bad business.
'Joker: Folie a Deux's' Fatal Flaw Is Turning the Fans Into the Villains of the Sequel I hated Todd Phillips' original "Joker," which made me feel like a crank when the hit anti(super)hero movie went on to earn the top prize at Venice, an Oscar best picture nomination and more than a billion dollars at the box office back in 2019. That film struck a nerve with me -- not in a good way, though I fiercely believe that provocation can be one of art's highest aims -- by transforming the beloved Batman villain into a poster boy for incels everywhere. I know people like Arthur Fleck, and the last thing they (or any of us) need is such a film to encourage them. I feared it would go down like "Scarface," as a fictive role model for sick minds.I've seen critics note that the movie is mostly one long courtroom scene which simply repeats -- or "relitigates," as this article puts it -- the events of the first movie. I know that retracing your steps -- going back to places, repeating actions and dialogue -- is just absolute poison in a movie, which is always about moving forward. If you go back a step every time you go forward a step, the audience can see the movie is not progressing but just wasting time. The YouTuber "CaptainMidnight" faults the film for undoing the whole conclusion of Joker and reverting to the midpoint of that film. That is, the first movie is all about Arthur Fleck coming to terms with the idea that he is Joker, and accepting that, after fighting it for most of the movie. In this movie, it reverts back to Arthur fighting this. So the movie undoes the dramatic choice he makes at the end of the first movie, and once again has him go through the same process of debating if he is Joker. This time, he decides he's not, but the movie makes us tread the same ground again. Hollywood's had so many gigantic bombs the past two years that it's considering doing the unthinkable: Asking the actual fans of these genre films for advice about what their expectations are, and what their red lines are. Leftwingers have been shrieking, shrieking about this. This article itself frames this as "Hollywood considers bringing 'the toxic fandom' into the creative process."
Flash forward five years, and the character is back for a scandalously unpopular sequel, except that this time, it feels like "Joker" hates us -- or, more to the point, it's as if Phillips turned on his original audience. (Turns out, fans are returning the favor. I spoke to a couple theater managers yesterday, and they reported a strange phenomenon: People are canceling their tickets, or simply not showing up, because of the bad reviews.)
Ask yourself, who is the villain in "Joker: Folie a Deux"? Hint: It's not Arthur Fleck. Instead of fearing Joaquin Phoenix's character, it's his fans we ought to be worried about -- those who want him to reprise his role as the face-painted chaos-monger. ... You want to know what's wrong with the "Joker" sequel? It's boring.
"The Acolyte" was the latest high-profile target of "toxic fandom," the catchall term for when fan criticism curdles from good-faith dissatisfaction into a relentlessly negative, often bigoted online campaign against either the project or its stars or creative leaders. In a franchise economy increasingly dependent upon established audience devotion to drive the bottom line, the threat of toxic fandoms poisoning that enthusiasm has become a seemingly intractable headache for almost every studio. And it's only getting worse. ... Perhaps the greatest irony of this phenomenon is the disproportionate impact these toxic fandoms have relative to their actual number.Ah yes: the "Tiny Minority of Haters" paradigm. Weird that this tiny minority is simultaneously so enormous that millions and millions of people around the world are rejecting these movies.
...The "Toxic Fans" are doing exactly what the SJWs did for years: They are pressuing studios to make movies for them. The SJWs demanded that every male hero be gender-flipped to female and every white character (especially gingers) to black. Hollywood didn't call them "toxic" -- instead, they catered to this actually-tiny minority of incessantly online Identity Warriors. All the "toxic" fans are doing now is trying to push back against the SJWs never-ending brigading and pressure campaigns to object these franchises with nonstop leftwing propaganda messaging. The leftwingers who demand genre films be made to please their tastes are heroes, the normies who say "No, stop this, make these films without a leftwing agenda" are villains. But here's the thing: There sure do seem to be a lot more "villains" than "heroes" in the audience, huh?
Those who did talk with Variety all agreed that the best defense is to avoid provoking fandoms in the first place. In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project. "They're very vocal," says the studio exec. "They will just tell us, 'If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.'" These groups have even led studios to alter the projects: "If it's early enough and the movie isn't finished yet, we can make those kinds of changes." Several studio insiders say they often put their talent through a social media boot camp; in some cases, when a character is intentionally challenging a franchise's status quo, studios will, with the actor's permission, take over their social media accounts entirely. When things get really bad -- especially involving threats of violence -- security firms will scrub talent information from the internet to protect them from doxxing.
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