January 14, 2025

THIS IS CNN: ‘We Gonna Nail This Zachary Young MF**ker:’ CNN Reporter’s Text Read Aloud In Court.

CNN reporter Alex Marquardt took the stand on Monday, marking the sixth day of the network’s Florida defamation trial, brought by U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young over a report about his efforts to aid in the evacuation of Afghan citizens.

Marquardt stated on the stand that he had pitched a story to the network about desperate Afghans fleeing the Taliban — which resulted in a piece that went to air with claims that Young had “preyed” on the people and “exploited” their desperation to make a quick buck.

* * * * * * * *

Marquardt made Young the face of the story after getting the go-ahead from “top brass” within the network. Young’s attorney, Devin Freedman, shared internal messages from CNN, including one from Marquardt stating, “We gonna nail this Zachary Young mf**ker.”

More here: CNN’s Phil Marquardt Refuses to Apologize for Alleged Defamation, Doubles Down.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

I’D ASK, “WHY CAN’T SHE JUST TELL HOMELESS PEOPLE NOT TO BURN STUFF OR SMOKE CRACK?” BUT I ALREADY KNOW THE REASON:

Progressive Newspeak is the art of saying what everybody knows in a way that allows them to pretend that they don’t know it.

Posted at 12:55 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE SHE WROTE FOR A MAJOR PAPER:

Much more at the thread, all of it embarrassingly awful.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

HEGSETH ON FIRE:

Plus:

Posted at 12:32 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Elon Might Buy WHAT Next??? “Are you kidding me with this? Why would Musk want to buy a social media platform in need of a total top-to-bottom re-do when he already owns a working social media platform that he did a total top-to-bottom re-do on?”

Posted at 12:12 pm by Stephen Green

SCOTT JENNINGS TO JOHN AVLON: Did Dems Promote Unity by Voting $50 Million to Fight Trump’s Deportations?

Here’s the story that Avalon doesn’t want to discuss, from those nutty MAGA hat wearers at the Politico yesterday: Gavin Newsom and California Democrats reach $50M deal to Trump-proof the state.

Related: Bush-Era Republicans Flourished As Anti-Trumpers — Scott Jennings Took A Different Path. “‘We’re the party that defends Western civilization. We’re the party that generally tries to adhere to common sense. We’re the party that respects cultural norms and values. We respect average everyday people. For as long as I’ve been in politics now, 25 years, that’s been sort of how I view the Republican Party. From that perspective, it’s no trouble at all for me to have proudly worked for George W. Bush, and in this election, and the last two voted for Donald Trump,’ Jennings told the Caller.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Reagan’ Not Diverse Enough for Oscars. “2024 biopic one of many films blocked from Best Picture consideration.”

Whatever slim hopes the film had for earning a Best Picture nomination vanished in a DEI snap. The film was ruled ineligible for the top prize because it didn’t meet the Oscars’ new diversity requirements.

The rules in question rose up from the fires of 2020’s BLM protests. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences proposed diversity mandates, which went into effect last year, demanding Best Picture hopefuls check multiple progressive boxes.

Example? A film must have diverse crews or tackle subjects pertaining to marginalized groups. Jews, apparently, don’t qualify.

“Reagan,” apparently, didn’t check enough boxes. And it’s not alone. TheWrap.com reports 116 films released last year didn’t qualify for Best Picture consideration.

Excluded from consideration under the new rules: Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (one Indian is not enough diversity and while the bad guy is white, she’s also female), Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter (probably), and Kramer vs. Kramer.

Those are just the ’70s winners from a decade when auteur directors shot the movies they wanted to shoot. I’d love to hear what Francis Ford Coppola, George Roy Hill, or Milos Forman (among others) would have to say about today’s rules.

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green

METAPHOR ALERT:

Imagine what might happen if an entire nation did something like that.

Posted at 10:50 am by Stephen Green

NUMBERS MATTER: USS Hartford could be next US Navy submarine to extend service.

The US Department of Defense has awarded General Dynamic Electric Boat an $83.7m modification to a previously awarded deal for the completion of an engineering overhaul of the US Navy’s Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) USS Hartford.

According to an 8 January 2025, contract modification notice, the work will be performed in Groton, Connecticut, and is expected to be complete by November 2027.

Any way to speed that up, fellas?

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

THE BRUTALIST: The Raw Concrete of America.

The story follows the fortunes of the Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) after he flees the aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe to seek his freedom in the United States…Tóth settles with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), a furniture-maker in Philadelphia, who is enslaved by his desire to assimilate: He marries a shiksa, he becomes Catholic, he even changes his Hungarian surname to Miller. Tóth regards him with contempt. Soon, he encounters the wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), an ersatz Charles Foster Kane, who is of course enslaved to his own money, but also to a driving desire to be thought of as a serious, intellectual man. Van Buren, in turn, enslaves Tóth, all but forcing him to design and build a large, self-consciously modern community center in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. And of course, Tóth enslaves himself, first to drugs to numb his despair, and then to despair itself, as he comes to see his American experience as little more than an extension of his detainment in the concentration camps.

In case anyone in the audience isn’t tracking with the brutality of it all, Corbet helpfully includes a scene where Van Buren rapes a drunken Tóth while making antisemitic observations about the causes of the Holocaust. (Yes, yes, we get it—America has raped the world….) And in case that brainy symbol isn’t clear enough, shortly after, he restates the film’s thesis in the mouth of Erzsébet, who declares to her dejected husband, “You were right, this place is rotten. The landscape, the food we eat—this whole country is rotten.” And so it goes until the very end, when Corbet unveils his final exhibit: At the first Venice Biennale, Tóth’s niece reveals in a speech that his forced labor for Van Buren was really just an extension of his Holocaust experience, that what his patron has intended as a monument to a modern, forward-looking America was in fact a re-envisioning of the death houses at Buchenwald.

Wow, I’ll be happy to see the Biden era come to end as well next week, but this film sounds like a massive overreaction to its worst excesses.

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE, ANYWAY? Nearly Half of Federal Employees in the Swamp Plan to Resist Trump, Poll Finds.

The poll found that many Americans are willing to support the new administration, even among the elites and even among those who voted for Harris.

The survey asked, “Looking ahead to the next four years, will your political efforts be primarily to support the Trump administration or resist the Trump administration?”

Most Main Street Americans (59%) said they would support the new administration, while only 28% said they would resist it. Even the Elite 1% proved more likely to say they would support (48%) than resist (39%) the administration.

Even some of those who said they voted for Harris in November said they would support the new administration. Twelve percent of Harris voters said they will work to at least somewhat support the new administration.

On Election Day, 64% of the Elite 1% voted for Harris while only 34% voted for Trump. Yet among the Elite 1% who voted for Harris, a quarter (26%) said they are working to support the new administration.

Federal Government Managers, however, proved evenly split, with only 44% saying they would support the administration and 42% saying they would resist it.

Let them resist from the unemployment line.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green