ANALYSIS: TRUE: California Is Transitioning Into a Sanctuary State for Pedophiles.

PRESSURE WORKS: Chinese Cities Ease COVID Restrictions After Protesters Clash With Police.

Protests in Knoxville had a similar result a couple of years ago.

MARK JUDGE: Hey Hollywood, maybe make a #MeToo film in which the men are innocent? “The new #MeToo movie She Said has bombed. The prestige picture, based on the crimes of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, only made $2 million — ‘one of the worst results of a major studio in history,’ as Variety put it. Here’s an idea, Hollywood: Make a #MeToo movie in which the accused actually turn out to be innocent.”

JOHN NOLTE: How Woke Hollywood Killed the ‘Oscar Movie.’

Here is the domestic box office for this year’s titles enjoying the most Oscar talk.

• Till – $8.7 million
• The Banshees of Inisherin – $7.9 million
• TÁR – $5.1 million
• She Said – $4.3 million
• Triangle of Sadness – $4 million
• Bones and All – $3.8 million
• The Fabelmans – $3.5 million
• Armageddon Time – $1.9 million
• Aftersun – $756,000

Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once might be nominated, but their status as box office successes had nothing to do with Oscar talk. If anything, it’s the other way around: their box office success won them some Oscar heat.

The most shocking title on that list is The Fabelmans. Those of us of a certain age can remember when Oscar talk around a Steven Spielberg movie would have had people flocking to theaters, especially over Thanksgiving weekend (when Fabelmans opened). Spielberg guaranteed that magic cinematic experience we all crave.

There are only two movies on that list I’m interested in seeing: TAR, for sure, and The Banshees of Inisherin. Other than that? Nope, nope, nope… Life’s too short, and I have too many Blurays sitting around.

So why are these movies flopping?

Short version: They aren’t entertaining.

Hollywood has gone from “Let us entertain you” to “Sit down and eat your peas.”

And the peas are spoiled.

ABRAMS’ NON-PROFIT BOUGHT ESTATE, THEN FIRED HALF OF ITS STAFF; Haven’t we heard this song before, the one about left-wing activist group using funds given for political activities to buy real estate instead?

IT’S ONLY FOOD: Dutch Government Demands ‘Compulsory Purchase’ of 3,000 Farms to Comply With EU Environmental Rules.

Previously: How The Netherlands Has Become The World’s Second Largest Food Exporter.

An awful lot of food exports are going to be withdrawn from a very hungry world.

BOOK I AM READING: Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy. #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: Bachelor’s degrees have become optional for more jobs across industries.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Zero Republican professors found across 33 departments at seven universities.

We need a higher ed industry that looks more like America.

HMM: There Once Was A Prez on Nantucket, and Each of His Cars, a Fire Struck It.

WHY WHAT HAPPENS ON CAMPUSES MATTERS: Booklet describes the need for universities to be ‘drivers of equity and inclusion in American society.’

THIS IS A DIRECT RESPONSE TO TWITTER RE-EMBRACING FREE SPEECH: Google, YouTube spend MILLIONS to launch Global Fact Check Fund.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Government COVID Fascists Can’t Grasp That We’ve All Moved On. “The people tasked with doing everything they could to protect the public health did almost anything but that and most of the public is now aware of that. We aren’t in a state of early COVID panic and now have a lot of experience with them getting things very, very wrong.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: What’s Next for China’s Lunar Exploration Plans?

IF RANKINGS WEREN’T IMPORTANT, PEOPLE MIGHT FOCUS ON LOCATION AND COST: More Commentary On The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott. “The ire directed at U.S. News and other purveyors of rankings is understandable but can mask a deeper and more troubling reality: In the world of colleges and universities, reputation, brand strength, prestige — call it what you will — is now and has long been more important than anything else, including the nature and quality of the actual education provided. In fact it would be difficult to find another industry in which reputations are so fixed, so valuable, and based on so little hard evidence.”

The truth is, there’s much less difference between law schools than the rankings suggest. Faculty pretty much all come from the same handful of top schools, curricula are more alike than different, everybody has a nice building and library now (and nobody uses the library for research much, that’s nearly all online anyway). The students around you are on average smarter at top schools, but not that much smarter and often more deficient in other ways. The chief appeal of “top” schools is just prestige.

IT’S WORKING! American EVs reduced gasoline consumption by just 0.54% in 2021.

IT’S A WEIRD ADMINISTRATION: Theft case against Biden nonbinary aide Sam Brinton is admittedly ‘weirder.’

UPDATE:

WHY, INDEED? Why can’t Karine Jean-Pierre pronounce Nobel Prize?

SO MUCH WRONG WITH ‘RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT:’ With Senate passage Tuesday of the purposely mis-named same-sex marriage bill supported by all 50 Democrats and 12 Republicans, the deeply Orwellian character of American political rhetoric has become so obvious as to be undeniable.

That’s according to Dr. Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of the incisive analyst behind “The Briefing.” Don’t let his title mislead you because Mohler’s razor-edged analysis exposes the utter lack of logic behind the bill and the deceptive reasoning of advocates like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin. It’s lengthy at 25+ minutes, but well worth every second.

MEGAN FOX: 4 Reasons Police Haven’t Arrested or Named a Suspect in the Idaho 4 Murders. “For the sake of the families who just lost four beloved children on the cusp of their adult lives, this is a developing story that should be handled with extreme care. Already, just nineteen days into the investigation, the parents are starting to question the forthrightness of the police and their emotions are raw going into the first holiday season without their children. It would be helpful for them if the true crime die-hards didn’t fan the flames of upset for clicks and views. I’ve spent the day going over the facts of this case and to me, it’s looking like very good police work in a very difficult situation.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US consumer confidence falls in November for 2nd month.

JOHN ELLIS: The Decline of Higher Education: Thoughts on a generational takeover by the Left, and what options remain.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Uyghur Activists Want Biden Admin To Press China for Answers on Deadly Building Fire.

THEY CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE THAT, SINCE NONE OF THEM ARE: Mark Judge: Hey Hollywood, maybe make a #MeToo film in which the men are innocent?

THE GROWNUPS ARE BACK IN CHARGE AFTER TRUMP! Biden Official Makes History: The First Nonbinary Federal Official To Face Felony Theft Charges.