READER FAVORITE: Projector with WiFi and Bluetooth. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2025
November 19, 2025
I’LL TAKE “HEADLINES FROM 1939” FOR $500, ALEX: Poland to deploy 10,000 troops to defend against Russian attacks.
FORMER PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN DISAGREES: Personal Defense Tip: Do Not Shoot Through Doors.
MATH: Today’s students will earn 8% less (but won’t know how much that is). “The decline in reading and math achievement since 2013 means today’s students will earn 8 percent less over a working lifetime, estimates economist Eric Hanushek in a Washington Post op-ed.”
JEFF BEZOS: Stuck in the Middle With Blue.
TRIM YOUR NAILS: 360° Rotating Toenail Clippers. #CommissionEarned
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Franchise Fail: Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Can’t Move Climate Change Needle.
The Oscar-winner has dedicated more than a decade to a film franchise promoting a healthier environment.
The “Avatar” saga is one long, extended hug for Mother Earth. The environment is near and dear to Cameron’s heart. He’s spoken tirelessly against Climate Change, embraced a vegan lifestyle and hoped the public wouldn’t hold his eco-hypocrisy against him.
It’s why he has spent so many years, and endless Hollywood resources, warning us to heed his Climate Change worries.
No regrets. At least, not yet.
“I’ve justified making ‘Avatar’ movies to myself for the last 20 years, not based on how much money we made, but on the basis that hopefully it can do some good. It can help connect us. It can help connect us to our lost aspect of ourself that connects with nature and respects nature and all those things. … Do I think that movies are the answer to our human problems? No, I think they’re limited because people sometimes just want entertainment and they don’t want to be challenged in that way. I think ‘Avatar’ is a Trojan horse strategy that gets you into a piece of entertainment, but then works on your brain and your heart a little bit in a way.”
That strategy isn’t working, apparently.
Read the whole thing.
And here are tangentially related thoughts from Critical Drinker: The Avatar Paradox – Why Nobody Talks About These Movies. “They’re some of the biggest movies ever made, and there’s another one, Fire And Ash coming out in just over a month, yet nobody ever talks about them. Why?”
With the exception of Noam Chomsky, perhaps no intellectual has been more influential on today’s American neo-communists and radical progressives than Howard Zinn. The far-left academic, who died in 2010, literally wrote the book on the left’s revisionist history of the United States.
With his A People’s History of the United States, a bestseller thanks to generations of academics forcing their students to buy it, Zinn outlined a comprehensive vision of this history—likely drawn from Stalinist propaganda—that portrays the United States as a conspiratorial fraud got up by white racists and rapacious capitalists.
The conspirators, Zinn claims again and again over hundreds of pages, brutally exploit the American people, who are too duped or stupid to realize the truth of their plight. Thankfully, Zinn is there to enlighten them.
It is impossible to overestimate the power this vision exercises over today’s radical left. They have effectively adopted Zinn’s claims wholesale without the slightest question. Zinn’s influence is palpable in the tearing down of statues, demonization of the US as a racist and genocidal entity, and even “mainstream” efforts like the New York Times’ 1619 Project. If the radical left has a vision of what the US is, it is Zinn’s vision.
Katie Couric is apparently a fan, not surprisingly: Couric and Ken Burns Lament Left’s Declining Influence In History Education.
One of the bigger criticisms of PragerU appears to be a video where a cartoon version of Christopher Columbus says slavery is better than death in a conversation with time-travelling children from the present day. PragerU has defended itself by saying that is simply what the real Columbus would have believed. Indeed, one of the child characters immediately follows up by debating Columbus and telling him that slavery was “evil.”
Nevertheless, Couric rolled on, “And I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on this reversion to a brand of history that is not factually accurate, that presents American history, you know, through rose-colored glasses and gives the impression that Americans never did anything wrong.”
She also stated that, “Howard Zinn kind of tried to turn it on, turn this on its head with, you know, talking about history from the point of view of the oppressed instead of the oppressor, but it seems like we’ve made so many strides in giving a more inclusive and a more accurate view of our history, and now we’re going backwards, and it’s so frustrating to me, and as a historian, I can only imagine how you feel.”
Couric tried caricaturizing conservatives by claiming we don’t believe anything bad ever happened in American history, yet she was promoting someone who thinks nothing good ever happened.
For his part, Burns accepted Couric’s dishonest framing of the conservative perspective, “Yeah, it’s terrible and it happens. It’s the course of human events. You go forward, you go back, and yes, it’s simple. It’s in an autocrat’s interest to want to simplify this story and make it only one thing, but it’s, you can’t do that.”
Dennis Prager, “autocrat.”
Oh, and speaking of Couric: Katie Couric faces mounting criticism for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein at his private dinner with Prince Andrew AFTER pedophile was convicted.
THE INSTAWIFE IS VERY MUCH OF THE OPINION THAT IT CAN: Can one big meal really make you gain weight?
IT’S COME TO THIS: Female reporter who slammed Hollywood for thinking female reporters sleep with sources accused of sleeping with sources.
If you don’t follow the professional journalism class, you might not know how funny this is.
Possibly a few; read the whole thing. But then, perhaps Nuzzi is having second thoughts about the profession she stumbled into when that whole pop star thing went bust: Olivia Nuzzi, teen-pop sensation.
Rather than envisioning who sent pictures of what to whom, or getting jealous of a brainworm, Cockburn has found himself nostalgic. He’s casting his mind back to 2009, back when Nuzzi sought attention in a more innocent fashion: as an aspiring teen-pop starlet. Her MySpace page showcasing her singing talents as “Livvy” has unfortunately been deleted, but one enthusiast archived it so fans can at least see what it looked like.
“Livvy is a sixteen year old singer, songwriter and actress,” the page reads. “A former Wilhelmina model, she has appeared in various commercials, films, television programs and print ads since her start in the business at the age of five.” A child star… she never stood a chance.
The page begins with Nuzzi’s trademark modesty:
The day that Madonna released “Erotica”
The day that Andy Warhol made his first film
The day that Freddie Mercury sang his last note
The day that Judy Garland conceived Liza Minnelli
The day that Britney Spears told you to hit it one more time
The day that Cher first met a sequin
The day that Candy Darling took her last breath
The day that Mick Jagger first strut across a stage
The day that Pamela Anderson was introduced to silicone
The day that David Bowie sang “Lady Stardust”
The day that Michael Jackson first slipped on a white glove
… was the day that Livvy was born
Audio of one her recordings can be heard here — if you dare: “Nuzzi wrote a song called ‘Jailbait’ and it’s about what you think it’s about.”
IT’S AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL BUT ALSO STRANGELY LIMITED TOOL: AI May Be Making Some of Us Rich, but Why Is It Also Making Americans Unhappy?
IT’S BAD THAT HE DID BUT IT’S GOOD THAT HE COULD: Tesla safety driver falls asleep during passenger’s robotaxi ride. Notice that no accident was reported.
THIS IS CNN: Scott Jennings Makes the Most Scott Jennings Face EVER As CNN Panelist Makes Epstein Files About Racism. “You can literally turn the volume down and just by watching Jennings’ face, you can tell when something exceptionally embarrassing and ignorant is being said. Which is basically every night on CNN. Case in point, this back and forth about Epstein, Trump … and racism. No, really.”
Wait, back up, I think I heard an opportunity to make this about race!
— Alex Magill (@AlexMagill5) November 19, 2025
DEFENDING OUR ‘TERRIBLE BUSINESS MODEL’: As we come to the end of a challenging year, supporting FIRE’s nonpartisan defense of free speech is more important than ever.
THE CASE FOR HUGS: Intimacy and oxytocin together linked to modestly faster skin wound healing.
NO WONDER HAKEEM WOULDN’T CONSENT: Here’s the Epstein Email Hakeem Jeffries REALLY Doesn’t Want You to See.
(Okay, I have no idea how that happened. Link is fixed anyway. —C)
THERE’S A LOT OF RUIN IN A CITY: Endgame: Chicago.
True Classic Men’s Jeans – Stretch Jeans for Men. #CommissionEarned
TDS IS REAL… REAL EXPENSIVE: ‘What has Become of Us’: Rosie O’Donnell May Have Just Handed Trump a Golden Defamation Lawsuit. “I have previously expressed skepticism over some defamation cases against the media brought by President Donald Trump under existing case law. However, comedian Rosie O’Donnell may have supplied the President with a another defamation case if she cannot back up sensational claims made against the President to her 2.9 million TikTok followers. She states as a fact that the President is an ‘adjudicated rapist’ and settled child abuse cases.”
I’M PRETTY SURE JOHN FRANKENHEIMER INTENDED SEVEN DAYS IN MAY TO BE A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: Call It Insurrection.
Democrats have committed many outrages in their war against Donald Trump, and indeed against Republicans, going back to the time when Obama’s intelligence community began spying against media figures and the United States Senate.
Few people seem to recall that the CIA was spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee as it investigated abuses, or that it bugged the phone of James Rosen and hacked Sharyl Attkisson’s laptop. There were so many abuses during Trump’s term, up to and including lying to the FISA court to illegally spy on Trump’s associates, leaking false information to the media, and #resist lawful orders of the president.
Remember all those stories celebrating the #resistance?
For me, among all the evil things done that undermined our Republic, perhaps the worst betrayal was General Mark Milley’s admission that he collaborated with the Chinese, promising to inform them of any moves President Trump made that might threaten them.
When Democrats talk about “democracy,” they simply mean rule by the Democrats.
This is insurrection. https://t.co/D8yKfnw5dR
— Chart Westcott (@ChartWestcott) November 19, 2025
This latest video from Democrats encouraging intelligence and military officials to disobey orders with which they disagree is an extension of this principle.
Related:
If the dems calling for insurrection doesn't tell you how desperate they are after losing the shutdown battle and whatever little leverage they had left, I can't help you. The Resistance is dead. It's dead, Jim. It's so dead, that the dems are now calling for a revolt and…
— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) November 19, 2025
Flashback: Glenn’s 2016 paper on military coups in the United States.
MAYBE THE BEST NEWS SINCE I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHEN: Some Celebrities Are Finally Getting That We Don’t Care What They Think.
THIS:
Without mass deportation, the communist cannot lose.
With it, he cannot win.
It is everything to him. It’s his entire foundation.
Remember that. On this issue, we must win.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) November 18, 2025
CHANGE (IT BACK): Panera lost diners by cutting portions and staff. It’s reversing course to win them back.
When Panera Bread began shrinking its sandwiches and skimping on salads, it started shedding customers.
Now, to win them back, the chain plans to reinvest in the business and undo many of those same cost-cutting measures, it said Tuesday.
Once the No. 1 fast-casual brand in the U.S., Panera has dipped to No. 3, ceding the top spots to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panda Express. Last year, its sales fell 5% to $6.1 billion, according to Technomic estimates. For years, the chain’s traffic has been shrinking, according to CEO Paul Carbone, who took the reins earlier this year. Controversy after the chain’s foray into energy drinks didn’t help matters, either.
Shrinkflation and worse service were bad for business — and execs were surprised by this?