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

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."

The thing about Phillips isolating himself at a ranch during the premiere is no big deal. A lot of directors do that. I believe Spielberg and Lucas were hiding out in Hawaii during the release of their films that they started talking about Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But... One imagines Phillips knew he had a problem on his hands and didn't want to hear from anyone in the opening weekend.

From media shill-site Variety: How They Built The Bomb.

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.

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.

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."

"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.

...

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.

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?

Posted by: Ace at 04:28 PM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)

In Bizarre Attempt at Viral Vote-Getting Stunt, Governess Gretchen Whitmer Feeds Doritos to an Influencer on Her Knees In Offensive Mockery of the Giving of the Holy Eucharist

I don't know what on earth this is supposed to mean.

These people will do literally anything a woke "young person" tells them to do.

Collin Rugg
@CollinRugg

NEW: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds a chip to a begging liberal podcaster on her knees in an effort to get more votes for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Whitmer joined Canadian feminist Liz Plank for an abortion podcast episode.

The pair released the following video as a bizarre way to get more votes for Harris.

At one point during the podcast, Plank asked Whitmer if she ever thinks about getting a "post-birth abortion" on her two daughters.

The pair also talked about "masculinity" and why men aren't supporting Democrats.

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (471) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Elderly Internet Spinster Taylor Lorenz Repeatedly Lied to Her Bosses, Says NPR Hit Piece

They just want to date her

Carbon date her that is

Posted by: Stu Podaso

Taylor Lorenz claimed she left the Washington Post of her own accord.

No one believed her, obviously.

Now NPR relays leaks from their buddies at the Washington Post to do a hit-piece on her.

They're all super-left-wing, but they're also catty and vindictive. That's the only reason this was leaked and is being published -- they're personally pissed at her for lying.

The lunacy and gonzo leftwing bias, they're fine with. They just mad that she think she cute.

Oh, and of course: Her gonzo leftwing bias showed itself in attacking the Democrat "President" Joe Biden as a "war criminal," which they cannot abide. The Washington Post are all shitlibs -- they're Democrat operatives, full stop. Yes, they hate Israel and agree that helping Israel makes one a war criminal -- but they don't let you say that. Certainly not during an election year.

When tech columnist Taylor Lorenz left the Washington Post last week, she did so with a splash: An interview with The Hollywood Reporter about launching her own digital magazine, called User Mag.

"I like to have a really interactive relationship with my audience," she said. "I like to be very vocal online, obviously. And I just think all of that is really hard to do in the roles that are available at these legacy institutions."

Lorenz's professional fate at the paper was in doubt even prior to her announcement. Since August, its editors had grappled with the disclosure that Lorenz had labeled President Biden a "war criminal" in a selfie from a White House event in which Biden was visible in the background. She had circulated the picture to friends in a private social media post.

Lorenz, a frequent and often divisive presence online, never wrote for the paper again.

Three people at the Post with knowledge of events tell NPR that Lorenz lost the trust of the newsroom's leadership both by posting that selfie with the caption about Biden and then by willfully misleading editors in claiming that she had not done so.

Lorenz initially denied writing the caption or sharing it. After Jon Levine of The New York Post posted a screengrab of it online, Lorenz tweeted, "You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes." She told editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

After NPR verified the post was authentic, Lorenz changed her account of what happened, acknowledging to editors she had shared the image.

The Post kicked off a formal review, saying, "Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously." Lorenz maintained she shared the image as a joke echoing an online meme, not as a commentary on Biden.

The paper has not announced the findings of its review. "We are grateful for the work Taylor has produced at The Washington Post," a corporate spokesperson said in a statement. "She has resigned to pursue a career in independent journalism, and we wish her the best." The paper would not comment further.

"I have no idea about their review," Lorenz writes in a text to NPR. "All I know is that they've been incredibly cool to me and very great, and I'm on good terms with them.

"I want out of legacy media as a whole, for so many reasons," Lorenz writes to NPR. "And that's not a knock on legacy media, I love and support all of my friends in that system, but it's not the right environment for me to do the work that I want to do."

When I discussed her firing, I mentioned that it seemed unlikely she wanted to strike out on her own, and that she's the type who wants to be associated with an establishment outfit to lend her credibility and clout. NPR says that's accurate:

Even so, according to counterparts and colleagues who have known her at various points in her career, Lorenz has until now placed great stock in her affiliation with major mainstream news outlets. She reported for The Atlantic magazine and The New York Times before joining the Post. Yet she has consistently tangled online with critics in a way that tested the social media policies of those outlets. Both newspapers have struggled with policies seeking to regulate their journalists' social media postings on contentious issues.
Sponsor Message

At the Post, Lorenz was designated a columnist, giving her more leeway for personal expression in print and on her own accounts than a reporter would have. Even so, her work for the newspaper focused on reported articles rather than opinion pieces.

Ha. Hah. Hah.

Obviously if this gross internet stalker had attended a Trump event and labeled him a "war criminal," she'd still be working for the Post.

Posted by: Ace at 01:58 PM | Comments (434) | Trackbacks (Suck)

CBS Owner Shari Redstone Backs Reporter Tony Dokoupil Over His Woke Inquisitors

For all that that matters. And it doesn't matter much. The wokies own the place. It doesn't matter who "legally" owns it.

The chair of Paramount Global, Shari Redstone, is backing CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil after a contentious interview last week with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

"I frankly think Tony did a great job with that interview," Redstone said on Wednesday. "I was very proud of the work that he did. Yes, as hard as it was for me to go against this company, I think they made a mistake here."

"I just want to be clear that I've been working with the CEOs," the mogul elaborated. "I've been working with the woman who does a lot of our diversity training, and I think we all agree that this was not handled correctly, and we all agree that something needs to be done. I don't have, you know, editorial control. I am not an executive, but I have a voice in our platform, like all of us."

The comments from Redstone come after CBS Mornings co-anchor Tony Dokoupil is said to have discussed the matter with his CBS News colleagues. It is not immediately clear what Dokoupil said.

As I was saying: It doesn't matter what the owners and senior people say.

The young woke semi-literate savages have taken over the newsroom, just as they took over the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN, and they took it over without even a fight from the self-styled "Stunning and Brave Truth-Tellers."

Does CBS News Know Where Jerusalem Is?

'Do not refer to it as being in Israel,' said the network's senior director of standards and practices.

By Oliver Wiseman

October 9, 2024

In late August, Mark Memmott, the senior director of standards and practices at CBS News, sent an email to all CBS News employees reminding them to "be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news" from Israel and Gaza. One of the words on Memmott's list of terms was Jerusalem.

Of Jerusalem, Memmott wrote: "Do not refer to it as being in Israel."

He continued, in a note sent to thousands of journalists at the network: "Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel's capital. But its status is disputed. The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its 'eternal and undivided' capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem--occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war--as the capital of a future state."

Jerusalem's status is indeed contested. For instance, the United States' embassy in Israel is in Jerusalem, and the Jordanian Islamic Waqf has custody of its holy sites. But acknowledging the competing claims on different parts of the city, or declining to refer to Jerusalem as Israel's capital, are one thing. Denying that it is in Israel at all is quite another.

You know what else is disputed? Whether or not there is a "Palestinian people" at all. Oh, there are people living in Judea who are not Jewish-- but many say they're simply Jordanians, and that the "Palestinian people" idea was manufactured by Yasser Arafat to justify a demand for "a homeland for the Palestinian people" to rebut the Jews' own demands for "a homeland for the Jewish people." There was no real "Palestinian people" before it was created as a propaganda point.

(The people currently living in Gaza and the West Bank are descendants from the people living in the larger country of "Transjordan.")

So: Will CBS "News" also stop referring to "the Palestinian people," as it's also a "contested" point, or not?

Not, right?

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (393) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

Listen to Michael Walsh on the CutJibNewsletter podcast about the feminization of our military, and this pathetic display of military weakness will make perfect sense.

The maniacal Houthis are playing in the big leagues by limiting global trade with their ragtag military and some modern missiles and drones supplied by...you guessed it...Iran! But they aren't a big league team, and the curious inability of the American military to do much of anything against them is a searing indictment of the current crop of political cronies and fellow travelers in the upper reaches of our armed forces.

Another US Strike in Yemen But Little Evidence Military Operations Are Deterring Houthis

Major Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday that the strike involved 15 Houthi targets across five locations, and those targets included "offensive military capabilities, to include Houthi training and weapons storage facilities." He said "initial assessments are that we had good effects on that."

However, the strike involving Navy ships and Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles follows a year of U.S. military operations in the Red Sea aimed at fending off Houthi attacks, yet the rebels have continued to lob missiles and send drones to harass merchant ship traffic.

A year of operations against a 5th rate military that has no air force and is supplied by a single country, and we have failed. whoever planned those operations should be sacked. Whoever looked at the first strikes and didn't fire the planners should be sacked. In fact, everyone involved should be sacked and maybe the United States Military should reach back into its history and find some retired O5s who know how to kill people and break things.

At least we are burning through our stocks of stupidly expensive smart weapons so Raytheon and Boeing and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman can sell us some more stuff at inflated rates, far behind schedule!

Shipping data shows that the number of vessels crossing the Suez Canal, a key passage that is near the area of the Red Sea where Houthis are targeting ships, fell by about half at the end of 2023 and has yet to recover to original levels.

Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian and former merchant mariner, told Military.com on Tuesday that despite the fact that "the Houthi attacks are infrequent and seldom effective, with two ships sunk and four mariners killed, [they] have provided enough of a risk to deter shipping companies from risking their high-value ships sailing via the Red Sea."

Mecogliano said the impact has been that “the Houthis have pinched off 15% of world trade, sending the most valuable ships on a detour that has added time, cost, carbon emissions and risk in sailing in the Southern Ocean during wintertime.”

Hah...they can even drag "Global Warming" into this clusterf*ck! 15% of world trade is a very big deal, and the Houthis should have been destroyed in the first month they played their little game

"We're not seeking a full-out war with the Houthis, but we will continue to conduct strikes against the kinds of capabilities that we've seen them use against innocent mariners and maritime traffic as well as military vessels," Ryder said.

Oh good! Just a little war, with tea and scones in the afternoon and no bad guys being killed because that would be mean! let's blow up some empty warehouses and goatherd huts...that'll scare 'em!

There is no other kind of war. Either you fight to destroy the effectiveness of your enemy and cow him into submission, or you fail. Israel proved that over the last 25 years. Accepting some low level war from your enemies is a recipe for failure. There are lots of dead Israelis and many more dead Arabs because the long-term result of a titrated mess of a strategy is a bigger war down the road.

This mess has shown the bad actors of the world exactly how easy it is to disrupt trade and tie up large chunks of a nation's military with a couple of missiles, some off-the-shelf drones, and a few hundred 7th century pirates to threaten shipping. Next time maybe it will be surface-to-air missiles fired at major airports by recent "immigrants." Or maybe it will be a 40' container loaded with explosives detonated in the middle of a major bridge or tunnel in the West.

By not dealing with the Houthis, America and the West has shown that we are paper tigers, and the unintended consequences of this ridiculous, gentle war we are conducting will be far reaching.

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter]

Posted by: CBD at 11:00 AM | Comments (491) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Autumn
Thomas Hart Benton

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (296) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 10/10/24


Good Morning Kids. So Hurricane Milton has crashed into Florida at/near Sarasota. While not the category 5 horror show that the usual suspects in the media were predicting – and ghoulishly hoping for, the storm surge and sustained winds of over 100 MPH will continue to create havoc as the storm makes its way across the state and out towards the Atlantic coast. 3 million are reportedly without power as of this morning.

In other news, trying to get an accurate feel for where we stand in the upcoming election is giving me whiplash as we bounce back and forth between cautious optimism and throwing our hands up in disgust. We all know that polling is almost completely unreliable until maybe the final days before an election, and even then you take them with a grain of salt. As a great man once said, polls exist not to gauge public opinion but to try and shape it. Well that said, what then to make of supposedly Mrs. Emhoff's internal pollsters, as well as that of confirmed lefty polling outfits and pundits openly going nuts in declaring the sky is falling and that Trump not only is going to win but perhaps in the closest thing to a landslide as we can have in this day and age with the political landscape being what it is that has prevented that from happening for 40 years since Ronald Reagan almost ran away with all 50 states.

Beyond polling, if the panic attacks are merely there to get the base to the polls, why this insanity from Tampon Timmy?

The Harris campaign walked back Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s Tuesday claim that the Electoral College "needs to go," saying that it is not an official campaign position.
"I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go. We need, we need national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in," Walz said at a campaign fundraiser in California.
The campaign clarified later that the Harris-Walz ticket is not advocating for eliminating the Electoral College.
"Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College," a campaign official told CNN, adding that Walz "was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes."
Walz has made a series of verbal blunders that his campaign has had to clean up, including false claims about being present at the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. During the vice presidential debate on October 1, Walz admitted that he can be "a knucklehead at times." During her 2020 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris said she was "open to the discussion" of abolishing the Electoral College.

Just as a refresher for why we have it in the first place, for the trolls and other low-rent low intellect lefties lurking about:

The purpose of the Electoral College is to stave off what James Madison called the “tyranny of the majority.” The system gives voters in rural, lesser-populated states a voice in presidential elections by limiting higher-populated states’ ability to solely determine their outcomes. That was also the original design of the U.S. Senate, and without such protections for smaller states, the U.S. Constitution would never have been ratified. That means without constitutional protections for lower-population states, there would be no United States at all.

As with many of America’s institutions, Democrats loathe the Electoral College because it deprives them of the unbridled power to silence all opposition. There’s no need to waste time campaigning to the rubes in “flyover country” if they can juice turnout in Democrat-heavy cities and states instead.

Walz’s fundraiser remarks are an outward display of this disdain. Democrats claim they’re fighting for the “forgotten” man and woman, all the while working to deprive millions of Americans of having a say in the policies that control their lives.

It kind of puts the erasure of our border and flooding of the country with at least 40 million foreigners since the disastrous Teddy Kennedy -pimped Simpson Mazzzoli bill of 1965 with zero means or desire to ensure their assimilation into the American culture. Mostly because the Democrats need to erase that culture in order for them to amass permanent power in the drive to fundamentally transform America into yet another shitty little tyranny that has been humanity's lot until 1776 and then 1789. The Exception to history until the coming of Progressivism that has done nothing but Regress us back towards the dark ages.

So, if they were so cocksure that they had 2024 in the bag, why bring this up at this time? Yeah, Tim Walz is an arrogant, dimwitted fool, and sadly in fairness, far too many people in this country have no idea why there is an Electoral College, the difference between a democracy and a republic nor do they necessarily give a damn. Remember, at the same time our citizenry is being replaced by third world illiterate peasants, America's children have been brainwashed to hate their nation, its history, their birthright and even themselves.

In a not unrelated note, if places like California and New York are guaranteed Democrat wins in every election going forward, then why the freak out over Trump appearing at Madison Square Garden. Surely it's a waste of his time and his money, no?

A New York state Democratic lawmaker sparked outrage Wednesday when he compared Donald Trump’s upcoming campaign stop at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally that took place at the famous Big Apple venue 85 years ago.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, 58, called on MSG officials to cancel Trump’s Oct. 27 rally, claiming it could lead to “widespread violence” as he ripped into the former president and his supporters during the online diatribe.
“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,” Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat, tweeted in reference to the disgraceful Nazi assembly held during the reign of German dictator Adolf Hitler. . .Hoylman-Sigal, whose senate district includes the Garden, said he confirmed Trump’s rally is scheduled for 3 p.m. — just nine days before Election Day. The campaign event was first reported by The Post.
“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,” the Big Apple pol continued.
“For the good of NYC and its residents, I demand @TheGarden keep our city safe by cancelling the Trump Rally.”

Aside from Hoylman-Sigal being a miserable worm, the usual despicable sliming of Donald Trump as being Hitler has indeed resulted in violence. Two assassination attempts by Democrats. Somehow, I don't think this is what concerns this Hoylman-Sigal. Who is likely another self-gassing apostate.

Do I think that New York state could be in play for Trump? I strongly doubt it. My gut is that this is more a revolting display of not just hatred of Trump but for the fact that while many New Yorkers either Democrat or Democrat-adjacent might not necessarily dig him, but are becoming more and more disenchanted with Democrat policies, especially the open borders, crime and the crashing economy. It won't flip New York to Trump but it certainly seems to be freaking out the usual suspects about Trump's prospects elsewhere and all over the nation with less than a month until Election Day.

Have a good day.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• How does one justify squelching free speech and censoring opponents? By justifying it by “science.” The authors of a new study published by the scientific journal Nature submit that “differential sharing of misinformation by people identifying with different political groups could lead to political asymmetries in enforcement, even by unbiased policies.”
  The left is using bogus COVID-19 research to censor their opponents

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 06:57 AM | Comments (426) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily News Stuff 10 October 2024

Top Story

• The Internet Archive has been hacked and credentials for 31 million users stolen. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The passwords are encrypted with Bcrypt, which is pretty robust, but if you shared a password between the archive and some other site, it's time to change it and also to stop doing that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (75) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Overnight Open Thread - 10/09/2024
[Roger Ball]

Being a relief poster, I offer the theme of general and specific relief to the magnificent HORDE.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:51 PM | Comments (377) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Blues Grift Cafe

Iceland Highlands by Reg Saddler

Disinformation experts tell me this video is dangerous misinformation.

Happy puppy!

I could do this but it seems kinda gay.

Not sure if this is real or staged but that kick does look like it connects.

John Wick
@Scentofawoman10

Context : After a German football team failed to score in five straight matches, their fans decided to get clever and use giant neon arrows to remind their players where the goal was.

As Puddy said: "Gotta support the team."

The spectator stunt happened in 2012 in Germany.

First time on the new legs? (IG)

Tiny little pygmy horse racing (IG).

Just a cat preparing to freak you out later.

Ancient Roman road in Germany. Gooooood place for a barbarian ambush.

Helping an old stray dog cross the street.

Little puppy gets on the bandwagon and supports the New Conservative Hot Girl Trend.

Dog greeting owner after three year absence.

Elephant brothers play the "stop touching me" game.

Posted by: Ace at 08:10 PM | Comments (207) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Are Preferences Cascading? Kamala Harris' Own Polling Showing Her Losing Six of the Seven Swing States?!?!?!

Mark Halperin: "Very robust" private polling shows Kamala losing six of the seven swing states, ahead only in Nevada.

Before that: By request, a Venn diagram of Kamala's accomplishments.

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 PM | Comments (317) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

You may have heard that the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the latest Harassment Lawsuit by the deranged transgender man calling zimself "Autumn Scardina" against the owner of the Masterpiece Bakeshop for not making him a "transition celebration cake."

You might have thought this is good news. It's not. It was a procedural dismissal from the Supreme Court telling the Lawfare Stalker to continue suing him in lower courts.

This baker has been harassed by these absolute monsters for 12 years now. He is literally always being sued. He has been sued, either by private lunatics or the state itself, for the last 12 years of his life.

The Colorado Supreme Court emphatically did not dismiss this suit with prejudice, or tell this transgender stalker he's sued the same man on the same claims for five years (or something like that). It did not acknowledge that the baker has free speech rights. It did not acknowlege that US Supreme Court precedents now say that the baker has the right to refuse to make artistic expressions that go against his beliefs.

It just told the transgender terrorist to sue him again in a different court.

The persecution will literally go on until the man submits to his persecutors, gives up his business, moves out of state, or dies of stress.

And David French approves of this. He's said so in the past. He hasn't recanted.

Jack Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo. Phillips sells generic cakes, but he also customizes them. When he was asked to design a cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding, Phillips refused because he believed that doing so would violate his Christian faith.

When the Colorado Civil Rights Division punished him for discrimination, he sued. The case went to the Supreme Court in 2018. Phillips won based on the free-exercise clause. But the victory was hardly a definitive victory for freedom of religion. Authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy -- who also wrote the Obergefell decision that created a constitutional right to same-sex marriage -- the decision was predicated on the commission's clearly stated bias against Christians. As I wrote at the time:

This makes for a very narrow precedent that might not apply in other cases in which law enforcers aren't foolish enough to express such open antagonism.

And sure enough -- in a clear attempt to set him up -- Phillips was dragged into court again for refusing to create a cake to celebrate a gender transition. This time, Phillips found himself in Colorado courts where he lost twice. But, now, the Colorado supreme court has dismissed the case.

That's good, but the victory is not one based on religious liberty. The plaintiff in the case filed a direct lawsuit in the courts without first jumping through the proper administrative hoops. Specifically, when the Civil Rights Commission entered into a confidential settlement with Phillips and dismissed the administrative case, the plaintiff filed suit against Masterpiece directly when the proper course would have been to file an appeal against the commission's dismissal....

I am happy for Phillips, but don't be surprised if he is again subjected to merciless lawfare -- perhaps even by Scardina, as the Court ruled that "we express no opinion about the merits of Scardina's claims, and nothing about today's holding alters the protections afforded by CADA."

Does that mean the case can be reopened? I don't know.

...

What the country really needs is a strong Supreme Court decision unequivocally reinvigorating the free-exercise clause by overturning Employment Division v Smith. Far more portentous issues are at stake than the freedom not to design cakes that violate one's religious convictions, as important as that is. As just one example, I believe that the continued freedom of Catholic hospitals to abide by the church's moral teachings -- say, by refusing to perform abortions, assisted suicide, and sex-transition surgeries -- depends on it.

Adam Schiff, a Representative seeking to be a Senator, demands more illegal government-coerced censorship.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) led a group of lawmakers pressuring Big Tech companies to censor free speech, including from a presidential candidate.

Schiff and seven other Democrat lawmakers signed a letter whining that "most of your companies have cut their trust and safety teams," i.e., censorship teams. Their letter not only pressed Meta, Google, X, YouTube, Snap, TikTok and Microsoft to censor anything vaguely described as "misinformation and disinformation," but lamented the fact that former President Donald Trump has been restored on multiple platforms after previous bans. The lawmakers ended the letter by suggesting increased government-Big Tech collusion.

The lawmakers pontificated that, instead of cutting censors, the tech companies should "incorporate their election efforts into their permanent plans and community guidelines." Schiff and company seemed particularly fixated on allegations of 2020 election fraud, which are protected free speech.

Kamala Harris called her palz at CNN to demand censorship of Trump's "misinformation," and to cosplay as the sitting president.

What was Trump's "misinformation"? He noted, as I did, accurately that Milton had fallen from Cat 5 to Cat 4. She says we have to lie and say it's Cat 5 because the truth is "misinformation."

Posted by: Ace at 06:44 PM | Comments (175) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hurricane Milton Starts Hitting Florida as a Category 4 Hurricane

I hope all Floridians are seeking higher ground -- in Pennsylvania. And declaring themselves residents there, and voting early and often.

Hey, Democrats have established the "rule" that if you just claim you're not sure if you're staying or not, you're a resident. That's what they say for college students in swing states who really live permanently in their home states, right?

The National Weather Service warned residents to shelter-in-place as conditions deteriorated dramatically Wednesday afternoon and Hurricane Milton roared toward Florida's beleaguered west coast.

Tropical-storm force winds, flooding rains and tornadoes were spreading inland as the fierce hurricane was just hours from making landfall. Milton's sustained winds tapered off from 145 mph to 130 mph -- just high enough to remain a Category 4 hurricane 00 but the storm has grown in size, making its potential damage more widespread.

If we could just get that down to a Category 3...

Milton's tropical-storm-force winds now extend out to 250 miles.

...

"Historic, catastrophic, life-threatening -- all those words summarize the situation," said Austen Flannery, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Tampa.

The hurricane is spawning tornadoes. Seven so far.

Tornadic supercells -- dangerous, rotating thunderstorms that can produce tornadoes -- were beginning to sweep across the Florida peninsula, the update said. More than 12 million people were under tornado warnings, and the National Weather Service in Miami said on social media it had "up to 4 visually confirmed tornadoes today," with unofficial reports of others.

...

Tampa, with a metropolitan area that is home to over 3 million people, has not had a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than 100 years. Storm surge from Milton could drive water levels up to 12 feet above ground, the hurricane center said.

I hope that's alarmism based on projections from when Milton was Cat 5.

Update:

Ace, the National Hurricane Center is reporting maximum sustained winds of 105 knots (120 mph).

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 5h

President Trump is housing 275 Florida linemen free of charge at his Doral Miami resort ahead of hurricane Milton's landfall.
My President.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking at a briefing Wednesday, said the state is prepared. Hundreds of search and rescue personnel and 180 high-water vehicles have been embedded in likely storm impact sites, he said. Over 6,000 state National Guard members and 3,000 more from other states are at the ready, along with 50,000 linemen who will work on restoring power after the storm.

I saw it reported that that is the greatest pre-mustering of linesmen in history.

I hope that rat DeSantis finally took the phone call from Noted Hurricane and Border Expert Kamala Harris. Her wise counsel and zero executive ability (or responsibility) will be critical to the state weathering this storm.

Below, Kamala Harris showed how very informed and very inebriated she is most afternoons:

Posted by: Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (239) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oh No! Marxist "News" Outlets Are Putting Out Such Great Product and Are So Trusted by the Public That They Have to Begin Slashing Salaries of Even Their Top On-Air "Talent"

I might never recover. This is so sad.

I want you all to pray or meditate or think about your families -- whatever you need to do to find some strength. Because I know this news will be very upsetting to you. Very disorientating. How can the world be so cruel?

Let's all say a prayer for Stunning and Brave Top "News Talent" and hope they continue making the tens of millions that we know they're owed.

This sad story begins at the Paris Olympics, and CBS "News" personnel pretending to be Happy Regime Parrots.

In fact, they were sad, fretful Regime Parrots.

Because CBS "News" had just told the low-rated Norah O'Donnell that they would no longer be paying her millions for failure and would have to take a pay cut or exit the network.

O'Donnell had brokered a soft landing, of course--a long-term sinecure focusing on major cross-platform interview specials--but the veterans in Paris were savvy enough to understand the true implications: Norah's bosses had determined they could no longer justify her high-seven-figure salary while their audience was declining by double-digit percentages each quarter....

Sure, CBS News was the perennial third-place network and on the cusp of new corporate ownership, and Norah wasn't exactly a high-impact ratings driver, but it still seemed like a harbinger of a broader, long-projected belt-tightening. And, indeed, the very next month, the bean counters came for Hoda. Earlier this year, the Today star learned that her NBC bosses could no longer sustain her $20 million-plus annual salary, and that they wanted her to take a pay cut....

Inevitably, many television news talents will make similar announcements in the year ahead. As one veteran media executive put it: "Same drill, different cover story."

The great resetting of TV news contracts is now firmly underway, it seems, and most talent will be affected--at best by a smaller-than-anticipated cost-of-living raise, often by a pay cut, and, at worst, by a delicately choreographed defenestration. There may be a few exceptions to the rule--Savannah, the multitalented NBC headliner, who will become even more valuable to the brand in Hoda's absence; David Muir, whose nightly broadcast is often the most watched show on television, etcetera--but pretty much everyone else is vulnerable.

"In this stage of the deconstruction of linear television and network news, no one is safe," the media executive said.

In recent weeks, I've reported that Lester Holt, Wolf Blitzer, and other aging marquee talents are likely to exit soon. I can also report that ABC News star George Stephanopoulos is currently in negotiations over his own $25 million-plus contract, which is up early next year....

Of course, the coming cuts are not limited to megawatt, multimillion-dollar talent. In many cases, the most life-altering hits will be felt by those in the middle.

LOL. First I hear that "Savannah" -- I guess she's such a star she goes by one name, like Madonna -- is a "multitalented headliner," now I hear that George Stephanopolous is a "megawatt... talent."

Delusion isn't just a river in Egypt.

..

It's exactly these kinds of diminished expectations that have talent and their agents in such a funk. And it may also explain why there's been so much curiosity from broadcast and network insiders around Amazon's decision to test the waters of live news event programming with its forthcoming Brian Williams-helmed election special.

That's an amazing story in its own right -- the repeatedly-fired fabulist has been chosen by Amazon to "cover" election night.

Another multitalented megawatt talent. But aren't all the media swells multitalented megawatt talents?

Former MSNBC host Brian Williams is in the final stages of discussing the possibility of hosting a live election night special on Amazon Prime Video, Variety reported on Saturday.

This article is from September 28. They've since signed the serial fabulist.

...

With less than six weeks to go until Election Day, the aim of the special, according to the five people familiar with the matter, is to have a "non-partisan discussion"

F***kin' LOL

of the events of the night. Variety reported a source said that the show would focus mostly on explaining the news rather than "breaking individual pieces of it."

According to Variety, the sources said that Williams would be mostly relying on The Associated Press to determine how candidates are doing in each state in the election special.

Oh, so he's an on-air blogger. Wonderful. What a multitalented, megawatt talent.

You know who the real multitalented, megawatt talents are?

You guys.

You know the people who successfully detected Biden's Parkinson's years before the media multitalented megawatt talents would even acknowledge he was in mental decline.

Posted by: Ace at 04:36 PM | Comments (308) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Hill: "Democrats Start to Hit the Panic Button"

Huh.

I disputed some commenters' claims that things are looking "rosy" for Trump. I guess some Democrats agree with them.

Democrats' nerves are at an all-time high.

Two months ago -- even a month ago -- they were feeling bullish about Vice President Harris's prospects of defeating former President Trump.

But now, with less than a month to go until Election Day, they're increasingly worried about a number of issues plaguing the Democratic nominee's campaign.

On Tuesday, there was grumbling from some Democrats about the vice president's interview on CBS's "60 Minutes."

There's also concern on everything from the static poll numbers in the race to the vice president's messaging and even her standing with men -- not just white men but Black and Hispanic men, too.

...

"We can't look back with any level of security [I think these illiterates meant "surety"] because we haven't had an African American woman on the ticket. We haven't had a former president running again. We haven't had a campaign with two assassination attempts. We haven't switched out a candidate two months before Election Day before."

"So it's just hard to know," Simmons explained. "If you're not nervous, you're not paying attention."

...

"Now that the sugar high [of the post-convention "Joy" offensive] is gone, people have realized what Kamala Harris has said from the start, which is that she is the underdog," Coley said. "This is going to be a fight. ... These numbers are just so stubborn."

I don't like cherry-picking positive poll reports to suggest some kind of broad agreement of polls in our favor, but I'll indulge myself here, because this does seem interesting. If true.

Democrats are now taking on water in Wisconsin. It's no longer an outlier: Wisconsin is in play, and incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who has hidden from national Democrats, knows this well, too. The national polling is irrelevant here, as her team's internals show Ms. Baldwin ahead by only two points. The Cook Political Report reclassified the race as a "toss-up," not the best of news, with less than a month before Election Day. Now, Democrats are scrambling, but this news out of Wisconsin also highlights a brutal part of Kamala Harris' operation: she flat-out cannot connect with working people.

...

Baldwin's internals have Donald Trump leading Kamala by three points in the state (via WSJ) [emphasis mine]:

Democrats have privately grown worried about Kamala Harris's standing among working-class voters in the crucial "blue-wall" states--particularly in Michigan.

Donald Trump has assiduously courted union members and noncollege-educated white voters with a message focused on high costs, manufacturing and the threat of China to the U.S. economy. Senior Democrats, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, want a sharper economic appeal from Harris and have conveyed those concerns to her campaign, according to people familiar with the conversations. They also would like the vice president to spend more time campaigning in the state.

Michigan Democrats have urged the campaign to make more overt appeals to auto workers and blue-collar workers by emphasizing the administration's work to grow the industry and build new plants.

[...]

Recent polling shows Harris and Trump essentially tied in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Winning the blue wall, along with Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, remains her strongest path to 270 Electoral College votes, as she is doing slightly worse in polls of competitive Sunbelt states.

An internal poll done by Democrat Tammy Baldwin's Senate campaign last week showed Harris down by 3 percentage points in Wisconsin, while Baldwin was up by two points, according to a person familiar with the poll. The person said much of the narrowing is due to Republicans' strength with noncollege-educated men. Public polling has shown Harris with a slight lead in the state.

Unfortunately, Trump is doing well with low-propensity voters. Voters who will probably not turn out for the election, but if we could turn them out, would vote for Trump.

But they probably won't turn out.

Dave Wasserman
@Redistrict

New @CookPolitical: in key battlegrounds, Trump's best bet remains high turnout of less engaged voters. Among voters who always show up, Harris still leads by four, 51%-47%. But among low/mid-propensity, Trump's back up to a 52%-45% lead.

How can they be turned out? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. The trouble is, Trump attracts a lot of disaffected voters, voters who feel little investment in American politics precisely because they have been ignored for 40+ years. The Regime's plan worked perfectly: these voters are now alienated and silenced due to their (very plausible) belief that their votes and voices just don't matter.

How do you get people to completely reverse their stance on non-engagement with a corrupt, ruthless, anti-citizen Regime?

David Strom had a post the other day about polls being "all over the map."

Here's one important chart. This shows Trump's current polling versus his 2020 polling. And 2020 polling vs. 2016 polling. Biden polled better than Hillary did and he (allegedly) barely won.

Just as Biden's improvement over 2016 resulted in a "win" (allegedly), then Trump's improvement over 2020 should bring Joy.

Trump's so brat.

Strom now writes that Kamala's media blitz is a "disaster." Well, I guess. But he also makes this point: Why would Kamala abandon her Hidden Joy strategy -- not appearing in public and just having surrogates talk about Joy -- if it were still working?

If it were working, they would continue it right through election day. But they sent this shaky, drinky airhead out to embarrass herself publicly.

They would only do that if they felt they had to, just like you never call a guilty defendant to the stand unless you're losing the trial.

That's a good point, but I can't help but think the answer may simply be: She staged a lot of fake interviews with very friendly supporters to get the media to stop saying she's avoiding the press and keep them on-side.

Kamala still can't answer in what way she'd be different than Biden, except to say, accurately, that she is not the same human being as Joe Biden, and that she's not Trump, which is... avoiding the question.

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (388) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Teamsters President: The Democrat Party Is No Longer the Party of the Working Class. It's Bought and Paid For By Tech Billionaires

Thanks to archimedes for this very true statement.

SEAN O'BRIEN, TEAMSTERS PRESIDENT: I'll be honest with you, I'm a Democrat, but they have f*cked us over for the last 40 years. Not all of them -- but for once, we are standing up as a union. I'm probably the only one right now saying, WTF have you done for us? And I'm getting attacked from the left.

Since I've been in office, two-and-a-half years, we've given the Democratic machine $15.7 million. We've given Republicans about $340,000 -- truth be told. People say the Democratic Party is the party of the working people. They're bought and paid for by Big Tech -- those Big Tech companies.

You've got the Republicans, who are now saying, we want to be the working-class party. You've got a great opportunity now to do that. And the Democrats, if 60% of our members aren't supporting you, the system's broken and you need to fix it.

Stop pointing fingers at Sean O'Brien and the Teamsters Union. Look in the mirror.

I had a heated debate/discussion two weeks ago with Chuck Schumer, and it got ugly because -- these politicians, the one thing I've learned is they walk in and tell you, "I did this for you." Okay, great, let me tell you what you haven't done for us or our members. We got into it pretty heavy.

I was like, "You had no problem taking $550,000 from me three weeks prior to me going to the Republican convention, and then you want to be a tough guy on Twitter -- like, whatever.

Video at the link.

We're hearing this a lot lately.

During the summer of 2020, I worked as a consultant for multiple progressive DA candidates backed by George Soros and his foundation. In the places where they won, these DAs have since done immeasurable damage to the local communities. They failed to prosecute offenders, especially surrounding drug use and distribution, and allowed crime to run rampant, hurting communities of color the most--the very people they were supposedly trying to help.

Far from progressive, these Soros-backed DAs did more to hurt progressives than anything the Right has managed; to everyday Americans, the term "progressive" now conjures up images of fentanyl overdoses, crime, defecation in the streets, and riots.

I feel remorse for the work I did on these campaigns....

Unfortunately, the Soroses are just the tip of the iceberg.

I spent years fundraising for Democrats. I raised millions of dollars. And in the process, I routinely saw and heard about inappropriate relationships between donors and candidates that would bust anyone's bubble about the independence of our leaders. There is an entire donor ecosystem working against the interests of regular Americans--and it's the one top Democrats are swimming in.

...

Or take Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. He is a megadonor--a "big fish" as we would call him behind the scenes--and is expected to spend up to $100 million to ensure that Vice President Kamala Harris beats former President Donald Trump in the presidential election. But Hoffman has an agenda: He has publicly called for the resignation of FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, who Hoffman said is "at war with American business."

The reality is somewhat different: Khan has been one of the only lifelines for working people in the modern Democratic machine. She stood up for workers' rights by banning non-compete agreements and led efforts to block major mergers of grocery stores like the Kroger-Albertsons, which would have resulted in higher food prices and hurt union workers.

If Hoffman is successful in his public campaign to replace Khan, he will further cement the Democrats as the party of the wealthy, the powerful, and corporate elite. I won't be surprised when he gets the job done.

...

Unfortunately, the Democrats aren't getting the message. Last week, Alexander Soros posted images at his opulent New York mansion on X with Harris' VP pick, Tim Walz.

Is this how you convince people you're the party of the people? By posing with a billionaire nepo baby while Americans struggle to pay for groceries?

Some Democrats surely know how damaging such a photo is to their flailing brand. But Soros has so much power and influence that no one would dare tell him to take the photo down.

...

Forget "Kamala is Brat" or the "Joy!" campaign. The image of Soros with Walz perfectly encapsulates the Democrats' real vibe these days--the unfettered influence the donors have over this party and the lives they've destroyed in the process.

There's more to the article. I clipped out, for example, his discussion of Steve Jobs' widow, a megadonor billionaire heiress and galpal of Kamala being instrumental in driving Joe Biden out of the race.

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (408) | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Have You No Empathy, Mon?:" Kamala Harris Now Sporting a Jamaican Accent

Remember when Madonna and Kathleen Turner began appearing on talk shows doing bizarre accents and pretending that's just their natural way of speaking? I think Kathleen Turner was shooting for some kind Italian/Spanish pidgin language (perhaps she got it from The Paolo) and Madonna was doing some kind of puffed-up RP English accent with Italian-Spanish-French flourishes.

I did say that Kamala Harris was scrambling to debut a new accent. The old front runners were Cockney Orphan and Crocodile Dundee.

She seems to have landed on Jar Jar Binks. Me-sa unzippa tey zippa nau?

Via vmom stabby stabby stabmillion:

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (334) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Reporter Who Dared to Ask Woke Prophet Ta-Nehisi Coates Offers "Regrets" For Committing Unauthorized Journalism at "Teary" Racial Bullying Struggle Session

This is fine. CBS "News" has laid down the law that no woke Marxist of a brown skin tone can ever, ever be challenged on his racism and antisemitism.

As John Nolte pointed out: There are zero "reporters" speaking up for this actual reporter. Jan Crawford did, but that was in an internal CBS staff conference, meant to be private.

Jake Tapper, brave defender of Democrats and "reporters" (but I repeat myself)?

Absolutely silent.

"CBS Mornings" co-host Tony Dokoupil told staffers during an emotional meeting that he "regretted" putting them in a difficult position amid the brewing scandal at the network over his grilling of an anti-Israel author, The Post has learned.

The embattled anchor spoke at Tuesday's staff-only meeting -- which was not attended by co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson -- a day after being reprimanded by CBS brass for his fiery sit-down with Ta-Nehsi Coates, a source with knowledge said.

"Tony said he regretted putting his colleagues in that position especially the ones overseas and in danger," the insider told The Post.

Are you shitting me? That's the pretext for this racial struggle session? That he was putting fake reporters in danger in Gaza by doing real reporting in America?

This is the cover story.

Wow, this is corrupt. They literally do nothing but lie.

"There were tears. [People were] very upset," the source continued, adding that staffers are "divided" on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and were "troubled" by how Dokoupil challenged Coates last week.

So that's the real story -- the wokies were upset that any of their hard left pro-terrorist dogma was challenged.

So what's this bullshit about "putting reporters overseas in danger"?

And if reporters really are in danger because a reporter in America asks a question about Hamas's terrorism -- doesn't that mean that Coates' claim that Hamas are the good guys is a lie?

Dokoupil, however, didn't back down from his incisive questioning of Coates about his new book during the 11:30 a.m. meeting, which was led by "CBS Mornings" executive producer Shawna Thomas, sources said.

A second source said that some black staffers who attended the meeting were critical that Burleson and King have remained tight-lipped about the matter.

...

Dokoupil did not return requests for comment.

CBS News declined to comment.

In the days leading up to Tuesday's meeting, the source said that "CBS Mornings" staffers complained to network top brass about the journalist's treatment of Coates, who was promoting his latest book, "The Message."

The book condemns what he called Israeli "apartheid" in its administration of the territories captured in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Dokoupil, a convert to Judaism whose ex-wife lives in Israel along with their two children, took issue with Coates, saying that the book "would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist" due to its characterization of Israel.

So, that's something that can put people's lives in danger -- a racially incendiary tract calling Jews filthy oppressors and calling for their overthrow.

But that danger is a good danger.

The possibility that a Gaza stringer might somehow be put in danger by questioning of this tract? Oh, that is an intolerable peril that we cannot abide.

During a staff meeting Monday -- on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,400 in Israel -- CBS News boss Wendy McMahon and president of content development, Adrienne Roark called out Dokoupil for bringing his "bias" to the interview, adding that it did not live up to the network's editorial standards, according to reports from Puck News and Bari Weiss' Free Press.

Isn't it sweet that CBS "News" finally admits that some reporters have "bias" and unfairly grill interview subjects they disagree with politically?

But that never happens with strident leftwingers like Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, of course. They're not biased when they break the rules of the debate to pester JD Vance with fake "fact" checks.

No, reporters only show bias when they grill a Woke Black Prophet of Hate.

Very relatedly: Trump demands that the propaganda organization CBS "News" release the full, unedited interview with Kamala Harris, and not just the clips they've edited and polished to give Kamala the Hero Edit.

[W]hen the full interview aired Monday night, the Trump campaign noted that much of Harris's incoherence had been conveniently edited out. Leavitt's statement was scathing, accusing CBS of protecting Harris by removing embarrassing moments:

"On Sunday, 60 Minutes teased Kamala's highly-anticipated sit-down interview with one of her worst word salads to date, which received significant criticism on social media. During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala's idiotic response. Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala's full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air? The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala's sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it. What do they, and Kamala, have to hide?"

What reason can CBS "News" have to not freely offer this? This is the first interview she's given where she was asked questions alone. It's critical information about the election that voters need and do not have.

To withhold the interview is, yes, election interference.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (345) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Wednesday Morning Rant

Anthropology

One of the more interesting things to happen during the aftermath of the 2016 election was the brief passion for anthropology among America's news media. These contemporary adventurers shucked their skirts and suits, replaced them with blue jeans and short sleeves, ventured out of their coastal enclaves and beat the bush into the American Interior. They went on safari into the wilds of Ohio and Indiana to study the natives.

This brief era of "safari journalism" ended as quickly as it began. The news talkers went to the Midwest, gazed upon the natives as a deer gazes into headlights, packed up and went home. They learned nothing. But then, of course, they wanted to learn nothing. They merely wanted to pretend to be open-minded. But if it was good once, it's just as nice twice, and safaris may be moving back into fashion. With COVID in the rearview mirror and Trump back on the ticket, the anthropologists are back out in the bush.

Posted by: Joe Mannix at 11:03 AM | Comments (294) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

A Wintry Moon
John Atkinson Grimshaw

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (386) | Trackbacks (Suck)