Trump: The Supreme Court Is Blocking Execution of the Law

The Supreme Court's lawless ruling means that every single illegal alien is supposed to get a full trial before the President is permitted to follow the actual law.

Trump pushes back against SCOTUS: Trials for all illegal aliens "would take 200 years"

President Trump blasted the courts Monday after the Supreme Court paused deportation flights, saying it's "not possible" to try every illegal alien before removal. The administration planned to use the Alien Enemies Act to remove migrants suspected of gang affiliations, but the Court's intervention has delayed the effort.

Key Details:

Trump says the courts are "stymieing" efforts to deport criminal migrants.

He claims holding trials for each case would take "200 years."

Justice Alito sharply criticized the Court's late-night halt of deportations.

Diving Deeper:

President Trump is once again confronting judicial interference in his push to restore law and order at the southern border. In a fiery post on Truth Social Monday, the president said his administration is being "stymied at every turn" by the courts--including the U.S. Supreme Court--which recently stepped in to temporarily halt deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

The move came as the administration prepared to deport illegal aliens, including suspected gang members, to countries like Venezuela and El Salvador. Trump, however, made clear that despite the Supreme Court's pause, his commitment to protecting American communities remains unchanged.

"We cannot give everyone a trial," Trump wrote, noting that the volume of deportation cases would require "hundreds of thousands of trials," an undertaking he said would take "200 years." His point? The system is not only overwhelmed--it's structurally incapable of dealing with the crisis Democrats helped create.

...

The deportation pause also drew fire from Justice Samuel Alito, who dissented from the Court's late-night order. Alito criticized the decision as hasty and lacking legal justification, writing that there was "no good reason" for issuing the order "literally in the middle of the night."

Trump gave a nod to Alito's dissent, calling the Justice "right" to want the deportation freeze lifted. "If we don't get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer," the president warned.

Alito blasted the 7-2 majority, which included all three of Trump's disappointing Supreme Court picks, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and the dizzy neoliberal schoolmarm Barrett.

I think this sounds like pure cope, but Jonathan Turley claims the Supreme Court is showing its "frustration" with the hundreds of "half-baked" injunctions being granted against Trump by political freelancers of the district courts, and they're showing this frustration by... backing those political freelancers?

Supreme Court Becoming Increasingly Frustrated With 'Half-Baked' Cases Challenging Trump Deportations, Turley Says

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Sunday that justices on the Supreme Court are showing signs of "frustration" with lower courts over deportation cases.

The Supreme Court temporarily halted the Trump administration's efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) early Saturday morning, saying detainees needed to have a chance to challenge their deportations. Turley said the high court was being forced into an "increasingly improvisational" approach by the sheer number of emergency cases.

"What Justice Alito is objecting to is that this is becoming increasingly improvisational," Turley told "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream. "You have covered the Supreme Court for years, as I have, and we rarely see this level of number of emergency cases going in front of the Supreme Court. And a lot of them are half-baked in the sense that they simply don't have the normal details, the record that you have. And the justices are expressing their frustration."

Turley observed that United States District Judge Boasberg of the District of Columbia had particularly irritated some of the justices.

"Previously, they expressed frustration for the district courts. You know, in the case of Judge Boasberg, they said, 'What is this doing in your court? This is a habeas case that belongs down south.' And I think that they are showing some of that frustration," Turley told Bream. "And I think all parties should take heed of that. I think going to the Fourth Circuit decision, the Trump administration should not be alienating Chief Justice Roberts and others. They need to tone down this language a bit."

...

"A lot of these challengers are bringing these cases fast and furious to the court, and what Alito is saying is, 'What are we basing this decision on? These things are coming to us with virtually no record.'"

They're so frustrated with the lawless district court rulings that they're endorsing them?

I have usually thought that we should respect the Court but I am done with that. Trump should do what Andrew Jackson did and simply ignore the Supreme Court.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (321) | Trackbacks (Suck)

State Department Will Close 132 Offices

Good.

"Offices" doesn't mean embassies. It means actual offices or sub-departments. Tiny little bureaucratic fiefdoms pushing the Marxist worldview.

The Trump administration is carrying out the largest shake-up at the State Department in decades, closing 132 offices and slashing bureaucratic layers as part of a broader push to downsize the federal government and realign U.S. foreign policy priorities.

Key Details:

The number of State Department offices will drop from 734 to 602, a 17% reduction.

The overhaul will eliminate 700 positions and restructure foreign aid by dissolving USAID.

Offices tied to human rights, war crimes, and "countering extremism" are among those being closed or absorbed.

Diving Deeper:

In a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. State Department, the Trump administration plans to close 132 offices in Washington, D.C., targeting programs that officials argue have become bloated, redundant, or misaligned with America's core interests. The move is part of a broader government-wide effort to reduce bureaucratic sprawl and refocus foreign policy efforts on strategic priorities.

...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long advocated for restructuring the agency, called the current State Department "bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition." In a statement, Rubio said the changes will "empower the Department from the ground up" and ensure that U.S. diplomacy serves American interests first.

...

Among the most notable changes:

The Office of Global Criminal Justice--tasked with advising on genocide and war crimes--is being abolished, with some of its responsibilities shifting to the department's legal division.

The Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO), which received over $330 million since 2016, is slated for closure. Its functions, officials say, are duplicative and poorly defined.

Programs for "Countering Violent Extremism" are being phased out, as the administration believes they overlap with existing counterterrorism and narcotics enforcement efforts.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a flagship foreign aid institution founded in 1961, will cease to exist by July 1. Its operations are being folded into regional State Department bureaus or other existing offices.

A new Bureau of Emerging Threats will be created to focus on cyber defense and global digital threats.

The reorganization also mandates a 15% personnel reduction at six top offices within 30 days. Though leadership notified Congress in a short letter this week, a more detailed explanation is expected in the coming weeks.

...

Rubio dismissed reports from The New York Times suggesting Africa-focused programs would be targeted as "fake news," saying the plan is not about reducing presence abroad but making the mission abroad more effective.

The first rumors about this I heard from the leftwing media, claiming that Trump planned to close many of the embassies in Africa. Once again, they just lied to farm outrage clicks.

Happy Tuesday! How is everyone?!

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (335) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Tuesday Morning Rant

"The hubris of elected officials knows no bounds. Or why ............Never mind I can't really write what is running through my head.

A Democrat senator who flew to El Salvador last week to visit a deported Salvadoran migrant elicited fury online after revealing that U.S. taxpayers funded his visit to see the detained non-citizen.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., traveled to Central America last week to check on the well-being of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, a migrant who crossed into the U.S. illegally before settling down in Maryland and marrying an American woman.

Unfortunately I understand the reasoning he is using. (With a headache to boot.) Having seen one of their colleagues get a free trip to a pleasant climate. A couple of attention whores, errr I mean Congressmen (Maxwell Frost (D-FL) and Robert Garcia (D-CA) thought they could pull the same shenanigans. A free trip to El Salvador courtesy of the USA.

It is regrettable our judicial and legislative branches of government believe it can conduct foreign policy. What makes it downright pathetic are the actions of race baiting elected officials of this country. They do every thing but fellatiate the President of El Salvador on prime time television while attempting to use our tax dollars to free a resident of El Salvador from El Salvador.

But on the bright side, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told the race hustlers to go pound sand.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian (ONT Cob Emeritus) at 11:00 AM | Comments (290) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat
Vincent van Gogh

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (285) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 4/ 22 /25

Good morning kids. Just like yesterday, I'm going to have to choose my words very carefully lest I make a whole lot of heads explode, including my own, as well as wave a giant red cape in front of the usual swarm of trolls, stormfronters and other assorted anti-Semites, freaks and geeks that make their regular appearance here and every other thread throughout the day.

With all the lawless insanity fomented by the Democrat/Left set to tear what's left of this country apart at any moment, of all things why in God's name does Ron Johnson think that this is the moment for him to publicly transition into the Rosie O'Donnell of Michael Moores, as what we need to preserve the union.

One would have been hard-pressed to imagine, just a few years ago, a sitting United States senator suggesting that the Building 7 collapse may have been a "controlled demolition." 
. . . To be clear, I don’t claim to know for sure what happened that day. If, after a legitimate and transparent inquiry — which has never happened — the results show that the collapse was triggered by debris or whatever the case may be, then so be it.

Why would anyone oppose investigating the deadliest attack on American civilians in history?  

If the evidence debunks all of the conspiracy theories, then all the better for building a real consensus based on fact.

I don't want to waste pixels and time on this but it does hit close to home, as I lost an old classmate who was near the top of the South Tower and I would have been in the Plaza that morning had I not left town a few days earlier. And of course as a native New Yorker and American I along with all of you and much of the world recoiled in horror as the attack unfolded and was almost all that was on TV for weeks and months on end afterwards. As much as the demise of my beloved parents those days are forever etched in my memory as the worst of my life.

Fast forward to today, where with all we have been through via the mainstreaming of the concept and indeed fact of the Deep State primarily due to the coronavirus and various plots to sabotage and/or overthrow Donald Trump's first and current term as President let alone the blatant theft of the 2020 election, which was and still is a hell of a lot more easy to prove than what Senator Johnson suggests.

And here's where my head explodes: given all of the aforementioned what was and is our government capable of doing, and why? Cui bono? We do have many of the same players and now their acolytes and associates still embedded in every department of every agency of every bureaucracy in DC, including and most especially our military and intelligence services along with the Judiciary of course.

But again, why this and why now Ron Johnson? As friend and friend of the blog Michael Walsh illustrates in his column, the controlled demolition is of the nation and the rule of a just and stable law itself that needs to be addressed. And perhaps coincidentally, he touches upon the events of 9/11 and what they have wrought nearly 24 years on, without the trutherism, yet with unflinching truths that would be better served getting at the heart of than where Ron Johnson wants to go.

When a group of German saboteurs were caught in New York and Florida in June 1942, planning to blow up hydroelectric plants and other loci of American industrial power but ratted out by two of their fellows in Operation Pastorius, President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew exactly what he was not going to do. "I want one thing clearly understood, Francis," he told his Attorney General, Francis Biddle. "I won't hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?" Biddle understood: this was war. There would be no civilian "due process." They would get what was coming to them. . . What a difference fourscore and three years make. Although the Islamic ummah declared war on the United States of America in 1998, and although President Trump has designated Mexican and South American narco gangs such as Tren de Aragua as terrorists under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an appalling number of American lawyers -- including some ostensibly on the right -- appear not to have gotten the message, and have dragged him into federal court over and over again over the phantom issue of alien "rights."

. . . It's easy to know where to place the blame: on George W. Bush, the man who appointed Roberts, who fumbled the Battle of 9/11 so badly that the country is still paying the price for his lack of resolve, who gave us Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and the TSA. One might also go back to the first Bush presidency, that of George H.W. Bush, who bungled the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991 and thus created the conditions for the international shambles we are living through today. . .

. . . We can date the decline of the United States as an international power to the first Bush presidency, and that decline’s emphatic punctuation with the presidency of his son, George W. Bush. “Poppy,” as the elder was called, essentially ceded control of the events that followed the end of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe—the cornerstone of American foreign policy for nearly half a century—to other players: to Boris Yeltsin in Russia, Helmut Kohl in Germany, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, and, critically, to the Hungarian-born George (Schwartz) Soros, who invested a great deal of money in the rebuilding of the East Bloc and was widely hailed at the time as a moneyed capitalist savior from the wreckage of communism.

And then 9/11 happened: . . Now we're fighting saboteurs and infiltrators from our own hemisphere, here on our home turf, "Maryland men." After Pearl Harbor, FDR went before Congress to declare, "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

. . . Now, instead of the chair, our enemies get the best lawyers your money can buy, and laugh in your face.

Not to trivialize the memory of the victims of 9/11, but what happened on that day is a drop in the ocean compared to the toll of human suffering and wastage of human potential left in the wake of every Democrat/Leftist in every office they ever held or continue to hold and every RINO/globalist flunky who goes along with them in order for them to wet their beak via aiding and abetting in the dismantling of the Republic.

Here is but one truly frightening example, among many others affecting other states including supposedly Red ones from the transgender insanity, taxation, freedom of speech and religion, the second amendment, open borders, to the climate change hoax, the march of Islam, that taken all together are the cutting edge of depriving us of our lives, liberties and pursuit of our individual happiness by forging the chains of a terrible new slavery.

In an alarming move that should concern every freedom-loving American, Illinois lawmakers are advancing House Bill 2827, known as the “Homeschool Act.” It’s an ill-conceived piece of legislation that should be renamed “The Illinois Family Exit Act” because, no doubt, many families will be looking for an exit if this monstrosity is signed into law. . .

. . . This legislation directly threatens the rights of parents to educate their children, particularly those who choose homeschooling for religious or moral reasons. When the bill was introduced, it garnered a massive negative response among Illinois citizens. Homeschool families valuing their educational freedom signed witness slips in opposition to the tune of over 50,000 in 24 hours.

But let's dip our toes into 9/11 trutherism. Precisely at the moment when President Trump has the Democrat/Leftists and globalists on the ropes, and as said Dems are loudly and proudly defending Hamas terrorists and illegal alien violent criminal gangster terrorists along with forcing males into women's bathrooms and women's prison cells, as well as forming a circular firing squad for not being insane enough to please the true believers or not pretending to be moderate effectively enough to fool the rubes.

Ugh.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. 

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Illinois bureaucrats are here to protect your kids... from you.
  A Homeschool Law That Could Criminalize Parents and Threaten Jail Time
  
• Noem was taking her family out to enjoy Easter festivities in the city when the suspect grabbed her bag and left the establishment, a DHS official told the outlet. CNN reported that Secret Service officials identified the suspect as an unknown white man wearing a medical mask after reviewing security footage.
  Report: DHS Sec. Kristi Noem Robbed at DC Restaurant
  
• Michael Walsh: . . .Now we're fighting saboteurs and infiltrators from our own hemisphere, here on our home turf, "Maryland men." After Pearl Harbor, FDR went before Congress to declare, "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God." Now, instead of the chair, our enemies get the best lawyers your money can buy, and laugh in your face.
  THE COLUMN: Fight with Soldiers, Not Lawyers
  
• One would have been hard-pressed to imagine, just a few years ago, a sitting United States senator suggesting that the Building 7 collapse may have been a "controlled demolition."  (Ron Johnson is now the Rosie O'Donnell of Michael Moores - jjs)
  WATCH: Senator Demands 9/11 Investigation Into ‘Controlled Demolition’ of Building 7

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:15 AM | Comments (372) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 22 April 2025

Top Story

• AMD's 16 core Zen 5c dies have a single shared L3 cache. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are used in the largest Epyc server CPUs, with up to 192 cores in total.
  
  This is not a huge deal for Epyc CPUs because you still have twelve CPU dies each with its own cache. But it is potentially a big deal for desktop CPUs, because the moment you go off-die - even over AMD's high-speed Infinity Fabric that links these chiplets together - you slow down a lot.
  
  And the fact that AMD is already shipping unified 16 core dies makes rumours that Zen 6 will be a unified 12 core die a lot more believable.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (99) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Monday Overnight Open Thread - April 21, 2025 [Doof]

(Photo and Mystery Click are a long distance dedication)

Howdy Hordelings! Hope you are having a wonderful Monday. Step on in to the ONT and share some words of wit and/or wisdom!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (354) | Trackbacks (Suck)

T-Rex Arrivals Gate Cafe

by Adaam Soule

Great drone footage of a drift race. (IG)

BASE jumping from a mountain. (IG)

Two bird gangs engage in bird-on-bird violence.

Some birds with strange calls.

Having a nice swim with some jaguars.

Little big cats in the pool.

This roe deer is a natural in front of the camera.

A big pack of wolves walking a snowy trail.

Why you should have an owl.

Baby owl gives kisses. Or maybe he just wants his "mom" to pop a worm into his mouth.

ICYMI: Golden wants you to put her fairy wings on.

A dog has a bell collar so that his blind friend can play with him.

Baby elephant tries to catch his trunk by stepping on it.

Old man and his old dog out for a walk. Caption: "Love until the end."

Film from 1930s San Francisco. I'm struck by the lack of human excrement.

In a civilized society, they rush to help someone when she falls.

A little boy comforts an abused dog that his family adopted. Very cute.

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 PM | Comments (222) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Paul Sperry: Stacy Abrams' Greasy Fingerprints Are All Over the $2 Billion In Biden Graft Sent to Her

Abrams wasn't just a recipient of Biden's graft -- she lobbied for it.

Despite the claims of media "fact" checkers, who red-facedly scream she had nothing to do with acquiring the $2 billion. She was just sitting around on her Healthy At Any Size ass and then $2 billion dropped into her acres of lap.

Last month, President Trump singled out Georgia activist Stacey Abrams as someone who helped orchestrate a controversial $2 billion deal between left-wing nonprofit groups and the Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration.

"We know she's involved," Trump told Congress.

He was right. But after his statement, the Washington media went into overdrive to pooh-pooh her role in a frenzy of "fact-checking."

The Washington Post, for one, claimed Abrams' role in the Biden massive green-energy initiative has been "vastly overblown" by President Trump and the "right-wing media."

The paper's top fact-checker asserted it's "a stretch" to suggest the Democratic politician helped land the grant. "[S]he was not involved with Power Forward's EPA grant," Post reporter Glenn Kessler recently wrote.

The Post also denied she had "any role at Power Forward Communities beyond advising Rewiring America," one of the partners in the coalition.

This claim was echoed by PolitiFact, a fact-checking site run by the liberal Poynter Institute, which quoted an Abrams spokesperson as saying, "Abrams did not have a role at Power Forward Communities beyond her position at Rewiring America."

But in fact, Abrams and her partner Ari Matusiak, CEO of Rewiring America, were the driving force behind winning the massive grant, something they revealed in their own words during a podcast last year. Matusiak said she helped "put together" the Power Forward Communities coalition to apply for and win the $2 billion grant.

By his own account, Matusiak also helped the 2022 Biden legislation that created the $27 billion green fund that Rewiring and its coalition were able to tap into two years later.

PolitiFact also claimed Abrams is no longer working for Rewiring, but Abrams' own website said she is still working with the nonprofit.

"Stacey serves as a senior adviser and consultant for Rewiring America," her site states.

Abrams and Matusiak did not respond to requests for comment.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (285) | Trackbacks (Suck)

James Varney: The Department of Education Doubled the Number of "Racial Bias" Investigations Against Schools to Pound Them Into Adopting DEI Policies

How close this country came to being extinguished.

Probes handled by the department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges and universities roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year. Investigations by hundreds of OCR lawyers and staff members -- and responses to them by untold numbers of school officials and administrators -- touched on everything from allegations of sexual violence and disability accommodations to website compatibility.

Defenders of the office say it has been an invaluable protector of civil rights for America's nearly 70 million students. They say eliminating or even downsizing the office, which has already begun, would kneecap thousands of ongoing investigations while abolishing a prime instrument of justice.

"This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education," the ACLU declared last month. Trump, it said, has put "millions of students' education and civil rights at risk."

Advocates for handicapped students, who until recent years accounted for half of all complaints, are concerned they might get short shrift in the Trump administration and have gone to court to block cuts. "We have many members who file complaints, and it has left many of them in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability," said Selene A. Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, plaintiffs in a suit filed March 14.

But backers of Trump's effort to eliminate the Department of Education counter that the Office for Civil Rights is a symbol of how the federal government has expanded its reach into what they describe as chiefly local matters. They say its investigative arm has been designed to make it as easy as possible for the department to maximize its influence and oversight through investigations.

A complainant does not need a personal connection to a school. Indeed, petitioners don't even have to live in the same state, and legal standing is not a factor. They do not even need to identify themselves. They are not required to try to resolve their problems at the local level before notifying the feds -- though many do. Consequently, the office's operations sometimes function as a nationwide anonymous sounding board rather than a source of last resort, a place where anyone can make a federal case out of any slight, real or perceived.

Although OCR probes include many serious allegations, the system's structure means the number of cases can be inflated through duplication, serial filers and ambitious bureaucrats.

"The numbers aren't really what they first appear," said Teresa R. Manning, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative counterweight in higher education to the liberal American Association of University Professors. "A lot of this was by design. If they didn't have complaints, they wouldn't have jobs, so a lot of federal bureaucrats and campus officers want any grievance to become a federal case."

Trump has largely shut the office down:

The numbers themselves are unclear. Neither the Department of Education nor its Office for Civil Rights responded to multiple requests for comment, and a listed phone number is no longer manned daily; voice messages left there were not returned. But it appears the administration has laid off some 240 people in the OCR, shuttering at least six of its 12 regional offices. Currently, eight of 22 "key staff" positions there are vacant, according to its website.

When Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon first announced layoffs in February, reports mentioned 12,000 active investigations listed on the OCR database, which was last updated on Jan. 14. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his own report on the office, claiming 6,800 cases would be shortchanged by the layoffs.

But no matter which total is used, the claim that U.S. schools are teeming with incidents of overt racism or sexism, or bias against handicapped students, is misleading, according to experts familiar with the OCR and its work.

In theory, every complaint is reviewed to determine if it constitutes discrimination on the basis of race ("Title VI"), sex ("Title IX"), or disability. If so, the Office for Civil Rights can open an investigation, or its attorneys can allege that there are "systemic" violations and trigger much broader investigations.

Such initiatives were highlighted in a glossy report the office released on Jan. 16, four days before Trump's inauguration. The office appears to have published six such "special reports" since 2016, with half of those during Biden's term. Two of them -- the first and another in 2021 -- dealt with alleged "racial disparities" or "equity" in school discipline.

This looks like a more proactive OCR following the age-old practice of boosting the cases on its books and then insisting it needs more funding, said Jim Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former assistant secretary of education in Trump's first term.

"Skepticism is legitimate, because by declaring something is 'systemic,' then rather than resolve that one issue they can turn it into a federal case," Blew said. "And if you're going to interpret the discrimination on much different and broader levels than ever before, that's going to increase the number of complaints, too."

Posted by: Ace at 05:38 PM | Comments (166) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hollywood in Danger of Becoming "The Next Detroit Auto Industry" as Film Productions Flee the State

Hollywood is suffering a well-earned contraction.

The mantra has been "survive until 25."

But 2025 looks like another Grime Milestone.

Lately, creative workers are increasingly chasing their Hollywood dreams in production hubs far from Hollywood. LA continues to hold the lion's share of film and TV jobs in America, but after a long grind of jobs slowly slipping away, the exodus from the city has accelerated in recent years. A recent analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures conducted by Patrick Adler and Taner Osman of Westwood Economics & Planning Associates found that the figure was 22% in August, down from about 33% two years earlier.

...

The filmed entertainment industry's center of gravity is shifting further from Hollywood at a time of upheaval. The decadelong shift to streaming was exacerbated by the pandemic, which stalled, then boosted, production as people stayed inside and became couch potatoes. Peak TV came to a halt in 2022 when networks, studios, and streamers couldn't make the financial math for all those new streaming shows work. And filming was shut down once again in 2023 because of the Hollywood actors and writers strikes.

When projects slowly got back on their feet, fewer of them were turning their lights on in LA. FilmLA, which issues permits for production in the region, found that Greater Los Angeles' share of US-produced TV and film projects declined from 23% in 2021 to 18% last year. The number of people employed in the traditional entertainment industry in LA, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hit a 30-year low in June. At the same time, jobs related to video gaming, live events, and the creator economy rose in the city as people's media diet shifted toward social video and away from traditional TV and movies.

That article is from late 2024.

Now some in the industry are warning that LA may see a collapse similar to the one Detroit suffered.

Hollywood At Risk of Becoming the "Next Detroit Auto." L.A. Production Insiders Voice Alarm

As a new tally shows plummeting shoot days in Los Angeles, organizers gathered to strategize on ways to get postproduction and music incentives included in California's bill to boost the industry.

The specter of Los Angeles becoming another Detroit, a city built on a specific industry that became a shell of its former self when that business moved out, loomed over a compelling film and TV industry town hall that tackled not only the calamitous drop in production in Hollywood and California, but also the fight to get the state to increase its entertainment production tax incentive.

The event on Monday night drilled down into a later stage of the entertainment production pipeline that is also currently in crisis: scoring and postproduction.

"This is not hyperbole to say that if we don't act, the California film and TV industry will become the next Detroit auto," said Noelle Stehman, a member of the "Stay in LA" campaign who spoke at the event.

California doesn't want to offer tax breaks to productions -- which other states have used to lure movies to film there, so that Alec Baldwin can satisfy his thirst for killing women -- because they see such incentives as "tax breaks for the rich."

...

"These jobs haven't vanished, they've moved," intoned ProdPro CEO Alex LoVerde, pointing out that the United States has seen a decrease in production of 26 percent since 2022. One beneficiary has been Australia, which has seen a gain of 14 percent.

...

The music and scoring panel was even more sobering. Music contractors and producers Peter Rotter and Jasper Randall, whose Encompass Music Partners hosted the event, pointed out how booked recording days for scoring stages in L.A. have collapsed, from a high during Peak TV in 2022 with 127 days to only a bleak 11 this year so far. They also explained that scoring work costs two-thirds less in Vienna, Austria, and 90 percent less in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Thanks to their own choices, a once-thriving American industry is collapsing. Writing jobs have fallen forty-two percent from last year.

Even with the 2023 strikes in Hollywood's rearview mirror, writers are still feeling the pinch.

On Friday, the Writers Guild of America released new job statistics highlighting recent declines in television-writing jobs across various levels of the hierarchy. Post-Peak TV, those at the peak of profession were the largest casualties (in numbers).

Of the 1,319 fewer TV writer jobs for the 2023-24 season (vs. 2022-23; pre-strikes), 642 jobs were lost -- a decline of 40 percent -- at the co-executive producer or higher (up to showrunner) level. Lower-level writers (staff writer, story editor, executive story editor) were the next most affected with 378 fewer jobs versus the prior season, down 46 percent. Mid-level positions (co-producer through consulting/supervising producer) declined by 299 (-42 percent).

All told, there were 1,819 television writing jobs last season, a 42 percent decline from the 2022-23 season. Last season's numbers are far fewer than even the COVID season of 2019-20, which employed 2,722 writers.

Cord-cutters and corporate greed are to blame, the WGA says.

"With an industry in transition -- cable TV subscriptions and cable programming declining, a massive run-up and then pullback in streaming series as Wall Street demands quicker streaming platform profits -- the number of TV jobs has declined," the WGA's latest jobs report reads.

The report said the "studios' prolonged unwillingness to negotiate a fair deal in 2023" was also to blame as it shortened the 2023-24 TV season.

The strike itself didn't help, you know. The former customers found alternatives.

As usual, this post is just an excuse to pound on Disney.

Marvel is hoping that people will care about their new Thunderbolts* movie, consisting mostly of characters from their bad TV shows.

But the movie is looking at a $70 million opening. Or, $63 million to $77 million.

This is lower than what Captain America made in its opening ($88 million).

Idiot feminist Grace Randolf remarked that Hollywood likes to see the movie that opens the summer season open at $100 million or more, or else it's a "bad sign" for the summer overall.

Marvel's 'Thunderbolts*' Tracking for Fair $70M U.S. Opening

The superhero pic -- introducing a new team of antiheroes and villains to the big screen -- hopes to grow that number by the time it kicks off the summer box office season May 2.

It's a virtual given that the 2025 summer box office will get off to bigger start than last year when Marvel's Thunderbolts* flies into theaters over the first weekend of May. However, the antihero comic book pic still has its work cut out for it.

According to tracking, the tentpole is headed for a domestic debut in the $63 million to $77 million range, with a target number of $70 million. While a fair number in and of itself, that's on the lower end for a Marvel Cinematic Universe title opening in summer.

Disney insiders say there's plenty of room for growth, noting that the film's rag-tag team of antiheroes and villains are making their appearance on the big screen for the first time, so aren't a known property (advance ticket sales, which commenced earlier this week, are on the slower side so far).

...

Disney's well-oiled marketing machine has three weeks left to unleash the heart of the campaign for the movie, which stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, among others.

Barely anyone knows who those actors are, or what characters they play.

...

Marvel and Disney are leaning into the creative team's indie roots in selling Thunderbolts* as something other than the usual MCU title. The pic is directed by Jake Schreier, known for the A24-produced Netflix show Beef and 2012's Robot & Frank.

"It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes," Pugh told Empire magazine in a recent joint interview with the Thunderbolts* cast and crew.

Sounds like someone's preparing the explanation: "It's a great opening for an A24 independent movie!"

Per Google's AI, long-range predictions for Fantastic Four, which opens July 25th, aren't great.

Long-range projections for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" (scheduled for July 25, 2025) suggest a potential domestic opening weekend range of $70M-$85M, with some predicting a more modest opening between $35M-$50M. The overall performance is expected to be in the range of $250M-$300M.

That would be a failure. These movies cost at least $200-250 million and that doesn't include marketing and it doesn't take into account that theaters take about half the box office.

Elaboration:

Opening Weekend:

Early projections for "Fantastic Four: First Steps" put the potential domestic opening weekend at $70M-$85M for a three-day weekend and $80M-$95M for a four-day weekend, according to a report from Boxoffice Pro [2]. However, another analysis on a YouTube video suggests a more conservative opening of $35M-$50M, with a potential 250-300 million dollar gross.

The animated Jesus film from Angel Studios is the second-biggest movie in America.

Christian movies are dominating the box office this week, led by the animated hit "The King of Kings," which is backed by the studio behind the controversial 2023 smash "Sound of Freedom" and is being promoted by right-wing influencers on social media, who have billed it as an anti-"woke" movie.

"The King of Kings" finished second behind blockbuster "The Minecraft Movie" at the box office this past weekend with $19.3 million, which is only about $200,000 behind the opening weekend of Angel Studios' "Sound of Freedom."

Four of the top 10 films at the box office this week are faith-based movies, according to Box Office Mojo's latest daily totals, including all three parts of the television series "The Chosen: Last Supper," which distribution company Fathom Entertainment released in theaters.

"The King of Kings" is an animated film featuring a star-studded cast that follows writer Charles Dickens as he teaches his son about the life of Jesus Christ, while "The Chosen: Last Supper" is the fifth season of the historical drama series that depicts Jesus's life.

"The King of Kings" had the biggest box office weekend for a biblical animated film, surpassing the Oscar-winning animated movie "The Prince of Egypt," which earned $14.5 million in its opening weekend in 1998.

Disney-financed Dr. Woke suffered its worst ratings of all time with its latest gay woke episode. Only 1.58 million watched the latest Dr. Who show per overnight ratings, an all-time low.

This follows the first episode of the season, which got the worst-ever ratings for a season's debut episode, at 2.0 million overnight viewers. I think the previous low was 2.6 million (from the previous season).

Also note that the last episode of the prior season received the worst ratings ever for a Dr. Who finale.

I saw someone speculating that Disney encouraged Dr. Who to go as woke as possible so it would absolutely collapse and they could then buy the IP from the BBC at firesale prices. I don't think that's true. Not because Disney isn't a dirty company, but because Disney's reason for encouraging the BBC to go as woke and gay as possible is just their corporate mission statement.

Disney is going to have serious competition for its Orlando park this summer. Universal's Epic Universe opens May 22, and Disney's cutting ticket prices to draw crowds.

Universal Epic Universe opens in Orlando, Florida in 46 days.

The park is currently testing out operations for team members, their families and the media. On Saturday, FOX Business got a sneak peek at the massive attraction that features portals into "five immersive worlds" that offer shopping, dining, new rides and experiences.

Park guests' first portal entry takes them into Celestial Park, also called "the heart of Universal Epic Universe" in a media release. It features gardens with lush foliage, pathways and walkways to bring back the "park" element of a theme park.
...

Universal Destinations and Experiences, a unit of Comcast NBCUniversal, is fourth in the top 10 theme park operators worldwide, according to the 2023 TEA/AECOM Theme Index and Museum Index, which provides some of the most recent data. Disney Experiences is number one, and the two mega-entertainment operators have parks in proximity in central Florida.

The two companies are prepared for a scorching-hot summer of competition, with Disney offering deals on tickets, stays and opening new shows featuring "The Little Mermaid" and "Disney Villains."

Disney is trying to blunt the impact of Epic Universe by offering $99 per night rates at one hotel.

Epic has five different parks. One is all about Nintendo/Mario and related characters, one's about How to Train Your Dragon. Another one is a big (new) Harry Potter ride.

The one that I'm the most interested in is their Universal Monster Park. The animatronics look pretty good. More of Frankenstein here.

If you saw that Jenny Nicholsen video, you may remember that one of her big complaints about Disney's Star Wars park is that they promised free-ranging robots, but delivered none. Well, one, sometimes -- sometimes you can see an R2-D2 rolling around, but she dismissed that, claiming that was just the same remote-controlled R2-D2 they sell in their store, so it's really more of a product demo than an attraction.

But apparently Epic Universe does have free-ranging baby dragons wandering around. (We'll see how long they work for before they start breaking down.)

Under its skin, it's one of those Boston Dynamics dog-bots.

A couple of "Is This Something?" trailers. "Warfare" is getting good reviews. Chris Gore and Alan Ng of Film Threat says it's not political, except in the way every war drama is political -- isn't war terrible? It's about urban combat in, I think, Fallujah.

There's a Japanese samurai movie called 11 Rebels that looks good, too.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (483) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Is It Time to Outlaw NGOs?

Glenn Reynolds wrote this week about so-called "non-governmental organizations," which the leftwing globalists employ to impose their unelected "shadow government" on the country. (And the world, if that matters.)

I'm often darkly amused by common examples of inherently false nomenclature: "Jumbo shrimp." "Government ethics." "Unbiased news media."

And one of our society's biggest falsehoods-in-a-name: "Non-governmental organizations."

Until recently these groups have been widely seen as international, idealized versions of domestic non-profits.

We thought of them as do-good organizations set up by people who really care -- about the environment, or poor people, or children, or freedom.

We imagined they raise money, help the downtrodden, send out press releases and engage in other private activities to promote the causes they favor.

They're not government entities, we thought -- the very name says that -- but a species of private charity whose good intentions deserve the benefit of any doubt.

Perhaps some NGOs do operate in that way.

But as we've learned recently, partly as the result of Department of Government Efficiency digging, many "non-governmental" entities are really just fronts for government activities that Americans would never stand for if Washington attempted them directly.

For example, America's border crisis was funded in large part by Joe Biden's government, which sent large sums of money in the form of grants to various NGOs that helped train migrants on how to get to the United States -- and how to claim asylum when they arrived.

NGOs helped the illegal immigrants with expenses on their way, and then provided legal resources and more than $22 billion worth of assistance for them -- including cash for cars, home loans and business start-ups -- once they got in.

This was US taxpayer money, laundered through "independent" organizations that served to promote goals contrary to US law, but consistent with the policy preferences of the Biden administration.

Under President Donald Trump, this funding halted -- and, unsurprisingly, the flow of illegal immigrants did, too.

Likewise, the weird wave of sudden global enthusiasm for "trans rights" and novel ideas about gender turns out to have been largely funded by the US government through USAID grants.

...

As data expert Jennica Pounds ("DataRepublican" on X) put it, "Over the last few months, we've come to a realization that should have landed much harder: NGOs weren't just adjacent to government."

They were tools of government, "the parallel government," Pounds wrote, specifically doing things that Washington bureaucrats knew full well they couldn't easily do themselves.

He mentions that the government pours money into supposed NGOs, which then kick back the money to... the same DC politicians who send them taxpayer money.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), for example, voted to award $14.2 million to Ocean Conservancy since 2008, Fox News reported -- and the NGO, in turn, paid his wife Sandra Whitehouse and her firm $2.7 million for consulting work.

No wonder the Washington establishment went crazy when Trump and DOGE started cutting off such funds.

He also notes that foreign countries use NGOs to stamp out domestic opposition to the Davos set.

Xer @amuse has a simple proposition: Let's ban NGOs.

@amuse
@amuse

End the Gravy Train: Why Public Money Should Not Fund NGOs

There is a moment, common to many political awakenings, when a veil is lifted. What once seemed benign now appears suspect, even sinister. For some, this moment arrived with the realization that NGOs, those supposedly nonpartisan charities bearing names like "Global Relief" or "Justice Now," were not simply operating beside government but often as the government. Not elected, not accountable, yet flush with your tax dollars.

Why does this matter? Because it represents a fundamental evasion of the structure and safeguards of constitutional democracy. The Founders designed a system of checks, balances, and electoral accountability. No power without representation, no authority without transparency. But in recent decades, and particularly under the Biden administration, a parallel architecture has emerged. This architecture is built not of departments and agencies, but of foundations, non-profits, and NGOs. It is a second state, answerable not to the people, but to donors.

What precisely are NGOs doing with public funds? Everything from facilitating migrant influxes at the border, to administering social justice programs abroad, to writing and distributing model legislation domestically. The problem is not only the content of their actions but the structure in which they occur. NGOs are not subject to FOIA requests. They are not answerable to voters. They are rarely audited. Yet they regularly execute the very programs that would be politically toxic or legally suspect for the government itself.

Let us speak plainly. In theory, the state exists to serve citizens within a lawful and constrained framework. When the executive branch wishes to pursue a policy, it must secure funding from Congress, survive judicial scrutiny, and face the judgment of voters. But NGOs allow for a sleight of hand. The executive can partner with an ideologically aligned NGO, give it taxpayer funds, and let it carry out controversial operations at arm's length. It is both an end-run around constitutional limits and a backdoor laundering of political will.

...

Who benefits from this arrangement? Not the American public. The real winners are the architects of ideological influence: men like George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations have pumped over $32 billion into a sprawling latticework of NGOs across the globe. These NGOs, seeded with private money, use their alignment with progressive causes to secure government grants. Once federally funded, they expand their operations, amplify their messaging, and become the default executors of soft power.

...

Here the absurdity becomes structural. The taxpayer, often unknowingly, is subsidizing the political opposition. Conservative voters in Texas may wake up to find their taxes supporting NGOs that lobby for transgender curricula in schools, the defunding of police departments, or the relocation of foreign nationals into their communities. This is not charity. This is policy, outsourced.

...

The appeal of NGOs to progressive administrations is not mysterious. They provide plausible deniability. They can test radical policies, stir public sentiment, and run propaganda campaigns under the guise of humanitarian work. They can sue the government in one circuit while receiving funds from it in another. They are unregulated proxies in the battle for the soul of the Republic.

At bottom, the use of NGOs to circumvent constitutional governance is not just a fiscal or administrative concern. It is a moral one. The essence of republicanism is deliberative legitimacy: laws made by elected bodies, executed by accountable officials, within a transparent structure. NGOs subvert this. They represent a fusion of elite philanthropy and bureaucratic ambition, insulated from both market discipline and democratic consent. In some cases, the subversion is formalized in statute.

...

They are neither wholly public nor truly private, and they answer to neither Congress nor the citizenry. They exist in the gray zone, where political agendas thrive without oversight.

The remedy is not complicated. First, federal funding to NGOs should be halted. Where services are needed, the government can contract private firms through open bidding processes, with strict oversight. Second, all existing grants should be reviewed for compliance, effectiveness, and political neutrality. Third, Congress must assert its power of the purse and demand justification for any non-governmental expenditure. Finally, all existing NGO-related appropriations should be placed on a firm legislative sunset schedule. This would force transparency, restore congressional control, and begin the process of dismantling the permanent infrastructure of taxpayer-funded activism.

See the post for more.

Posted by: Ace at 03:01 PM | Comments (307) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Woke Chinese-Slavery Exploiter Nike Is Funding a "Study" To Figure Out What Hormones to Inject Into Young Boys So They Can Pretend to Be Girls and "Compete Meaningfully" in Girls' Sports

Jennifer Sey
@JenniferSey

Buried deep in today's article in @NYTmag about Blaire Fleming and @SJSU
women's volleyball team, is the fact that @Nike is funding a study to understand how much they can hamper male advantage in pre-pubescent boys to allow for "meaningful competition" despite those advantages.

1. why is @Nike funding research (yes we knew this already but here it is in the @nytimes) about how to disfigure and sterilize little boys sufficiently such that they retain male advantage but not so much that it would be unfair to girls?

2. Girls/women are not hampered or impaired males. It's never ok. The mere debate about how much impairing is the right amount is demeaning and degrading to women.

3. @Nike -- just make sneakers and focus on bringing your business back to life. This is, at best, a distraction from your fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders and divisive for your consumer base. At worst, it is criminal. It is most certainly grotesque and unethical and outside the scope of business goals to be in the business of destroying the bodies and sexual function of little boys.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (307) | Trackbacks (Suck)

New Mexico Judge Resigns After Feds Arrest "Man" In His Home

The Albuquerque Journal hides the actual news here: The feds didn't just arrest a "man" he was keeping in his home.

And not just an Immigrant Man, either.

ICE came to arrest a Tren de Aragua man this judge was keeping in his home.

Doña Ana County judge resigns after feds arrest man at home

LAS CRUCES -- Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano has resigned from the bench where he has sat since 2011.

Although his resignation letter, dated March 3, did not state his reason for stepping down, it followed shortly after a man awaiting deportation proceedings, accused by federal law enforcement of being affiliated with a Venezuelan gang, was arrested at Cano's home.

Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, 23, faces federal firearm charges after Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant on Feb. 28 at a Las Cruces residence owned by Cano and his wife, Nancy.

"Working with each of you has been a very rewarding experience for which I will remain eternally grateful," Cano wrote in a letter addressed to 3rd Judicial District Chief Judge Conrad Perea and court staff. The letter declared his last day as March 21, which dockets show was also the last day he had hearings scheduled in court.

was first elected as a magistrate judge in 2010 and ran unopposed in three subsequent elections, winning his fourth term in 2022.

I suppose that was pretty obvious.

The details of Ortega-Lopez's arrest and prior relationship with the Cano family are addressed in federal court motions seeking Ortega-Lopez's detention. In New Mexico federal district court, prosecutors argue that Ortega-Lopez is a flight risk and a danger to the community due to an alleged criminal history, including alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela.

Court filings state that agents recovered four firearms from a neighboring home owned by April Cano, who is identified in court filings as Nancy Cano's daughter. A criminal complaint alleges Ortega-Lopez admitted to possessing and firing them, as seen in photos and videos posted on Facebook last December.

Ortega-Lopez was taken into custody along with other individuals described as roommates in court filings.

For some reason the judge introduced this guy to his daughter.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter or Pesach.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (407) | Trackbacks (Suck)

THE MORNING RANT: Could Ranked Choice Voting Allow the GOP to Snatch Some Prominent Seats in Blue States?

Ranked choice voting (“RCV” has proven to be an effective tool for Democrats to win elections in red states and congressional districts, most famously in Alaska. Naturally, we Republicans stand in principled opposition to this electoral gimmick which has cost us the loss of otherwise safe seats in Congress.

Are we perhaps so indignant about how this is being used against us that we are forsaking the opportunity to deploy this same tactic against Democrats?

The specific gimmick with ranked choice voting is that it serves as an instant runoff. When voters cast their ballots, they also indicate who their second choice is in each race, and if their chosen candidate is not one of the top two vote getters, their backup vote gets counted. The reason Democrats have been effective in using RCV is that it generally also replaces party primaries with a “jungle primary” in which all candidates of both parties compete. RCV then sorts out the winner. Democrats have generally had the discipline to only run one candidate while Republicans split the vote with multiple candidates who might otherwise have been narrowed down to one candidate in a Republican party primary. Above all else, RCV inserts chaos and confusion into the election of what would normally be a reliable Republican seat.

Lisa Murkowski, a Democrat in elephant’s clothing who was bequeathed her Senate seat by her daddy, had previously lost a Republican Senate primary in Alaska, and stood no chance of ever again winning a Republican primary there. So to help her retain the Senate seat, the Alaska political establishment implemented RCV in 2022. Instead of a primary, there was an open RCV election. The real Republican, Kelly Tshibaka, received 43% of the vote, the same vote total as Ms. Murkowski, who despite running as a Republican gathered most of the Democrat vote. The actual Democrat candidate got just 10% of the vote, as his role was simply to ensure that neither candidate got 50%, kicking in the “second choice” option to push the liberal Murkowski over the top. Democrats also won Alaska’s sole seat in the House of Representatives in 2022 thanks to RCV, with Mary Peltola defeating Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich.

The good news is that Republicans took back Alaska’s House seat in the 2024 election. The bad news is that RCV remains in place there, which Murkowski will need to keep winning re-election.

Let’s forget about RCV for just a moment and think about all the political ground we conservatives have sacrificed out of noble principles. For years, we mocked political boycotts of companies as being something our sacred principles wouldn’t allow. But Democrats had no problem letting corporate America know that they’d boycott businesses if those companies didn’t engage in the culture war on the left’s behalf. So corporate America took the easy path, choosing to accommodate the left’s political agenda so as not to lose their business, while we conservatives piously refused to counter-boycott. How’d that turn out for us? Corporate America became an enforcement arm of woke culture. It was only when we started boycotting in response to woke advertising campaigns such as those from Gillette and Bud Light that corporate America started to back off from left wing politics.

Posted by: Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM | Comments (300) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Mid-Morning Art Thread

L'abandon
Guillaume Seignac

Posted by: CBD at 09:30 AM | Comments (349) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Morning Report — 4/ 21 /25

Good morning kids. Hope you all had a blessed Easter Sunday. And of course the big news this morning is that Pope Francis has died.

I want to be very careful what I write and how I phrase my thoughts because the last thing I want to do is offend my dear Catholic brothers and sisters. Regardless of the background, and it is a very checkered background indeed of this Pope, he was the head of the Catholic church, and his death coming as it does at the end of the Easter holy week, makes writing this column all the more problematic.

Yet, that said, His life and background defined who he was. And by looking at this summary of his words and actions from the invaluable Discover the Networks makes it crystal clear, and this excerpt is just the bullet point intro:

*Calls on America to welcome illegal immigrants fleeing persecution in their homelands
*Characterizes capitalism as an economic system “where the powerful feed upon the powerless,” and which leads inevitably to “the greedy exploitation of environmental resources”
*Asserts that the “inequality” inherent in capitalist economies constitutes “the root of social ills” and “eventually engenders … violence”
*Believes that “the bulk of global warming” is due to “the great concentration of greenhouse gases” generated by “human action”
*Opposes the death penalty and life-in-prison

From my perspective, until the very end he was essentially the same unreconstructed Argentinian Communist he always was. It's not that he embraced and promoted secular political causes, it's that the causes he embraced were at the forefront of a movement that sought the dismantling of the Church he was supposed to lead and antithetical to his stated beliefs about humanity, inclusiveness, justice and the lofty ideals he supposedly championed.

Most horrendous was his embrace of Islam, as Islam ramped up its ongoing 1,500-year war against infidels, including the Church all over the world and most brutally in one of the last major bastions of Catholicism and Christianity in general in the world, central Africa.

As he welcomed and embraced the most radical imams to the Vatican he made no mention of their bloody rampage, and yet insisted that the Western world and Catholics commit societal suicide by erasing their borders, destroying the greatest engine of prosperity the world will ever know, free market capitalism, and accepting the global warming/climate change lie as the excuse.

Also, his views on homosexuality and transsexualism in service to that dissolution were not merely the echoing of the sentiment of loving the sinner and hating the sin, but also as yet another assault on the Church from within. Perhaps if the Pope spent less time on demanding the faithful accept teachings antithetical to traditional Catholicism, he would have better served the faithful in defending them instead of defending the forces of darkness and evil seeking their destruction.

So an extremely flawed man who held the title of Pope has passed, and it will be up to the Lord to render His final judgement.

I certainly hope and pray that the next Pope is someone, who like John Paul II not only understands but perhaps like him at one point actually lived under the boot of and then stared down the face of evil. It would be most appropriate that Francis' successor be his diametric opposite. Given what's going on in the world today, it would be a Divine blessing, and I would be thrilled to see the cardinal from Nigeria or any from that part of Africa , whose flock has and continues to be decimated by Boko Haram and its allies be elected.

I have no idea what the internal politics are of the Vatican and college of cardinals. Given the twisted politics of far too much of the Western and putatively Christian world, insofar as the infection known as Wokism, Perhaps the best we can hope for is not another Pope Fiction, communist in Papal drag. I don't think they'll have the stones to elect someone who will be as vocal in calling out Islam as Francis was in apologizing for Islam while denouncing the advancement of Western civilization over the past two millennia.

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. 

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Pope Francis, who rose from janitor to the Catholic Church’s most powerful leader by proving equally at ease with intellectuals as society’s most downtrodden, has died at age 88, the Vatican confirmed.
  POPE FRANCIS DEAD

• Clarice Feldman: The broad scope and speed of the administration’s actions have knocked the sense out of the media, the Democrats, and the judiciary. They cannot seem to process the swift and expansive range of change without making themselves look ridiculous.
  Is it Time to Ignore the Judiciary?
  
• Victor Davis Hanson: Elite universities push for federal funding while ignoring legal and ethical obligations, fueling public distrust as they prioritize ideology over academic rigor and free speech.
  Do Elite Universities Really Wish to Fight the Federal Government?

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:25 AM | Comments (443) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 21 April 2025

Top Story

• Discord is deploying age verification systems recently made mandatory in fascist dystopias. (Soap Central)
  
  Like Britain. And Australia.
  
  Fortunately they're being a lot more sensible about this than the governments that enforced the rules. The verification pops up - once - when you want to see adult content.
  
  Which is not something I want from Discord, ever, so I don't see this as a huge problem. And you can pass the verification check with a face scan by the app and not have to upload government ID.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (163) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Easter Sunday Overnight Open Thread - April 20, 2025 [Doof]

(Mystery Click dedicated to the Son)

Howdy Hordelings! Happy Easter / Resurrection Sunday. Hope you were able to enjoy the day with family, friends, loved ones, candy, eggs, good food and drink - or whatever it is you did today. If you celebrate today's calendar date, go grab yourself some munchies and a large beverage. Now step inside the ONT and drop something witty in the comments!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (414) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Easter Bunny Edition!

A Gunthread Easter favorite!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! Happy Easter everybody! Has everyone bitten the head off their chocolate bunny yet?

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (306) | Trackbacks (Suck)